Sundance Prize Winner Simon Lereng Wilmont on War’s Toll on Ukrainian Children

variety.com:

Christopher Vourlias In the days before Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Danish filmmaker Simon Lereng Wilmont – the director of two critically acclaimed documentaries shot in the Eastern European nation – began to field messages reporting of increased hostilities in the restive eastern part of the country.The director’s feature directorial debut, “The Distant Barking of Dogs,” was filmed in the hamlet of Hnutove, a stone’s throw from the frontline of Donbass, where war has been simmering for the better part of a decade.

As fighting there intensified ahead of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Lereng Wilmont and Danish producer Monica Hellström (“Flee”) worked with their assistant director, Azad Safarov, and local production coordinator Lena Rozvadovska to evacuate the film’s two protagonists.

It was a harrowing escape. The filmmakers had arranged for the duo to take a train to the relative calm of Western Ukraine, where temporary housing awaited them.

But the train was scheduled to depart the day that Russian forces swept into the country; transportation ground to a halt, stranding the teenage Oleg Afanasyev and his grandmother Alexandra in a region under siege. “I was getting messages like, ‘Pray for us.’ ‘This is hell.’ ‘There’s no way out,’” Lereng Wilmont told Variety. “And that was terrible, terrible, terrible.”The two eventually made it to safety.