Polish director's film about Ukrainians fleeing war is presented in Cannes

'In the Rearview' was directed by Polish filmmaker Maciek Hamela, AP reports.

“When Polish filmmaker Maciek Hamela first began evacuating Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s war on their country, he wasn’t intending to make a film. He was one of the many Poles extending humanitarian aid to neighbors under attack, and had turned down an offer to film a television investigation there. But the reflections of the people he was transporting to safety in his van were so poignant that soon he began filming them,” the publication says. 

The film takes place almost entirely in Hamela's van, and the camera captures the exhausted passengers, one group after another, on countless journeys made between March and November 2022. The director wanted to show men, women, and children crossing a ruined landscape with bombed-out buildings, passing mines and destroyed bridges.

Among the other characters in the 84-minute film, a little girl so traumatized that she has stopped speaking draws special attention.

“The way we set up the film was to see the reflection of the war in these very small details of ordinary life and the life that we all have,” Hamela told The Associated Press in an interview in Warsaw before he flew to Cannes.

• This year's Cannes Film Festival runs from May 16 to 27.