The Melbourne Documentary Film Festival is screening the works of many exceptional filmmakers this year, but one of the standouts is War Mothers, directed by Melbourne-based filmmaker Stefan Bugryn.

War Mothers takes us to frontlines of the War in Donbass, a conflict that has waged in Ukraine since the Euromaidan revolution of 2013-14. But whilst most filmmakers might focus on the experiences of the soldiers in this conflict, Bugryn, who is of Ukrainian heritage, takes us into the lives of the mothers who have lost their children to the frontline.

Focusing on three women in particular – Galina, Svetlana, and Yulia – War Mothers provides a deeply moving and incredibly intimate examination of human resilience in the face of adversity. The admiration that Bugryn has for the strength of these women is made clear in every exquisitely crafted shot of this powerful film.

I was recently lucky enough to sit down and discuss War Mothers with Stefan. 

First of all, I just want to say that this is a truly fantastic film. How did you decide on this project?

I’ve always been a patriot, I guess, with my heritage. And that largely stems from my grandparents, because I had a very close relationship with them. They were always full of life and character, so it kind of made me respect the culture.

When the conflict started in Ukraine with what started as the Euromaidan Revolution, I followed the news as a member of the Ukrainian diaspora here in Australia. One night, this story came up about a woman named Svetlana who lost her son. He was a soldier and he died on the frontline. And then, she, in his honour, joined the army in communications and served alongside the men and that had served with her son.

So, I just thought, well, why don’t I go over there? Why don’t I just throw myself into it and perhaps there’s a story to be told? So, I made a few phone calls within the Ukrainian community, and got a lot of leads for people I could meet over there. It didn’t take long at all. It was actually a lot easier than I thought.

For those who don’t know a great deal about the situation in Ukraine and how things have got to this point, can you provide some context?

Ultimately, it has all become a misinterpretation of the Ukrainian people’s response to their own government’s corruption. In 2013, the Ukrainian people had enough of their president, who made a corrupt decision to suspend signing an association agreement with the European Union in favour of a Russian deal through which he would have made a lot of money. There was a revolution in Ukraine for 90 days. There were about 100,000 people protesting in the city centre of Kiev, and snipers came in and killed close to 130 people. The president fled the country and Ukraine was left without a leader. Russia took that opportunity to take what they thought was theirs, which is Crimea, and they held, basically, a faux election where they coerced people to vote in their favour. Once they saw that that was successful, they wanted to continue that throughout Ukraine.

There are pockets of Ukraine that are pro-Russian. So, they wanted to feed that and they sent in their own weapons, their own guns. They even instigated their own protests. Donbas is where their conflict has continued. That is the pro-Russian stronghold that Russia still feeds with funding, weaponry, and men.

But I imagine there was a long road between deciding to head over there and completing your film?

That’s right. My first trip over there was really all research. That’s when I went to the front-line for the first time, which was obviously a very confronting experience for me. But I guess the whole trip was confronting. I hadn’t been to Ukraine in about twelve years. I had an idea of what to expect, but when it comes to war, especially for someone who lives comfortably in Melbourne on the other side of the planet, it’s very hard to understand what you’re headed into.

But I was welcomed and it was a big thing for everyone over there. Whenever I would meet people, there would always be someone in the room that would want to introduce me to someone else. They would ring up their relatives, put me on the phone to them, and say, “Hey, can you speak to my brother or my uncle? They’re just … Just say hello! Just say hello!”

I guess just having an Australian there, who has Ukrainian heritage and also wants to make a film on them, was a big deal for them. And especially in the city I spent most of the time in was Zaporizhia. It’s really not a major city in terms of size, but it’s very poverty-stricken. I did not see one Westerner there, ever, in that city.

With all these people interested in meeting you, how did you come to focus on Galina, Svetlana, and Yulia, the mothers that you feature in the film?

Well one of the meetings, the one with Yulia, had been prearranged whilst I was in Australia. She is a sniper, and was friends with someone who lives in Melbourne who used to live in Zaporizhia. To meet her I had go to the frontline. It was kind of awkward because I had no translator with me and she didn’t speak English. She mostly speaks Russian. And my Ukrainian is probably 40% at best in fluency.

And then the last day that I was in Zaporizhia one of the volunteers arranged for me to go to a volunteer centre. It was operated by Galina who is also in the film. As soon as she heard about the documentary I was making, she got on the phone. And within 45 minutes, the volunteer centre was full of people. All of them were either war mothers or war fathers. And one by one, they just told me the stories of how they lost their children. And they showed me photos and they gave me graphic details. And that was one of the most traumatic experiences that I had on this project. Just a room full of people waiting, essentially, to tell me the stories of their children and how they passed.

At the end of it, the translator and I stepped outside and we just didn’t talk. It was like we were beaten up emotionally. We had to just sit there for a bit. But, in that meeting, I met Svetlana, who was the third mother. And she looked at me with this intensity in her eyes that captured me the same way that that first story did, and I knew she had to be part of the film. If I felt that strongly for her, then I thought the audience would as well.

So after ten days I came back to Australia, and concentrated on raising funds, then I went back. And for three months, I just lived with these people. Wrote their stories. Interviewed them. And got the footage that I needed to make War Mothers.

Can you tell us a bit about your experiences during that three months? It must have been quite a culture shock?

I mostly lived in Galina’s volunteer centre, which acts as a hospice for travelling soldiers because it’s basically in the middle of Kiev, the capital, and the west, and the frontline. It acts as a halfway point. It had a 24 hours cycle of mothers who would man the kitchen, run the volunteer centre and their primary job was just to make sure that the soldiers were comfortable. They would do their laundry. They would feed them. They would set up their beds, all this stuff. I met all these different kinds of characters. They’re all amazing people. And like I said, they’re all volunteers. Most of them aren’t there because they’re getting paid – the majority of them just wanted to protect their country and their family.

I remember there was a guy who would just linger in the hallways, on his own, looking at the floor. He was there for a while, when most people would only stay for one night or two. He was originally on the Eastern side with the Russian-backed separatists. But he came over to fight with the Ukrainians, even whilst his family was still over in the East. It turns out that he’d just been told that the apartment block in which his family lived had been shelled and his wife and child had died. And that’s when I realised; this is the reality for people here. There’s so many of those kinds of stories.

I think it affected me as well. When I came back, I didn’t realise until someone suggested it to me that I had an element of post-traumatic stress. Interviewing all these people. Being surrounded by these experiences. Every soldier had some kind of story. Every mother had a story. Not only are there these emotions, but also it was like a passion. For me, it was my job to ingrain myself in that passion. While editing the film I had a lot of moments where I just broke down. The editor, Steven Zelko, had the same experience and he wasn’t even there. We had moments where we would be watching the film and we couldn’t look even at each other.

How has the film been received by Ukrainians?

We had two screenings over in Ukraine. The most emotional one for me was in Zaporizhia where we had Galina and Svetlana there. Yulia couldn’t make it because she couldn’t leave the frontline. Which I thought was incredibly noble.

At the end of the film, as everyone was leaving I noticed there was a circle of people just hugging each other and crying and that was … Ukrainian people generally kind of take it as their story. The reception was very solid. People appreciated it because there’s no one over there doing what we did. I didn’t go over there with BBC or with VICE or anything like that. It was just me, and I’m really the only person that’s focused on the mothers, particularly. There was a lot of press. There were a lot of interviews. It was very well received and that’s what made me realise that there’s potential for more of these stories to be told. And that’s what I’m working on right now.

And for general audiences… what do you hope they get out of the film?

For me, I felt like people were telling the stories of the soldiers and the frontline. But there were no stories of the mothers. They seemed to be the ones that bear a lot of the emotional weight. If their sons pass away, they’re the ones to live with that. I want people to not only understand the human stories in Ukraine, but to show how mothers are affected. They’re the stories on the periphery that hadn’t been told. That’s what I want to share.

It really is a strong piece of filmmaking – you’ve definitely done something very special with War Mothers. I’m curious, are there documentary filmmakers or more generally, just filmmakers that you’ve been influenced by generally and in the context of this film?

In terms of documentary filmmakers, I really admire Kitty Green… and she has a Ukrainian background. And I’m dying to meet her, to be honest.. Her films… Ukraine Is Not a Brothel, that had a big influence on me.

In terms of filmmakers, I’m more interested in studying the medium of creating. So, I watched a lot of short documentaries. The Op-Docs on New York Times for example. When I first got into film, I was making dark comedies. I went from comedy to absolutely devastating human drama. Scorsese, Chris Nolan and Tarantino… they were big influences when I first got into filmmaking.

I love Cartel Land… Matthew Heineman directed that. That brought cinema to documentaries. Documentaries normally felt educational to me, but that one felt like a Hollywood style kind of documentary. I was like, “Wow!”

But, in terms of documentaries, Kitty Green is definitely my biggest influence!

Tickets to see War Mothers at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival are now available.