Polish Director Maciek Hamela On Making Ukrainian Doc ‘In The Rearview’: “What We Are Really Documenting Is First-Hand Witness Accounts Of War Crimes” – Cannes

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EXCLUSIVE: When millions of Ukrainians fled to the Polish border after the Russian invasion last year, Maciek Hamela, whose film In the Rearview is debuting in the Cannes market this week, was one of a number of volunteers who drove to help assist multiple generations of Ukrainian civilians in fleeing the life-threatening conflict.  “When I first went to the border it was because I heard that there were thousands of refugees with no buses or anything,” he says. “So, I just thought I would go along with some friends and when I arrived there was a line of cars from Warsaw and all the big cities in Poland who were there to pick up anyone who was arriving.

There was no kind of refugee camp on the border that you often find in situations like this, which was pretty amazing.”  RELATED: Cannes Film Festival 2023 In Photos Since the war broke out on February 24, 2022, more than 11 million Ukrainians have crossed the Polish border, with some 1.5 million of them still living in Poland.

It’s a common effort, says Hamela, that has really “energized the society.”  “We were all taken by surprise by how many people got involved in various ways, such as sharing their apartments and their beds but also going to the border,” he says.

Hamela says he had a very “humane reflex” to keep returning to the border to pick up refugees and the idea of filming a documentary about the experience came after three weeks of doing these drives. “I invited a friend who is a DoP who brought in a camera and we started documenting,” Hamela says. “We thought it could be used as testimony in some kind of process trial like in The Hague.