“I was filming without knowing what was going to happen an hour later,” says filmmaker Romain Goupil, author of a documentary on the Kiev circus

On February 24, 2022, the Russian army invaded Ukraine. In an emergency, Romain Goupil leaves alone for kyiv, at the beginning of March. The director arrives in the Ukrainian capital without knowing exactly what awaits him. He starts looking for a family “in order to follow with her the events day after day”, except “that they are dislocated”, “the men stayed, some to fight, but most of the women and children had left”, he explains. Finally, the circus of kyiv agrees to welcome him. He will spend a month with the Circassians and their animals, which he will film with his iPhone, “which is not digital at all”. He draws from this experience a documentary * to see Wednesday, February 22 on France 2 and in some cinemas in March.

France info : Why was your desire to go to Ukraine so compelling from the start of the war?

Romain Goupil : What will quickly trigger my desire to go to Kiev is the very strong memory of what Ukraine was like after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. I remember the battle that this country led to reconquer its independence and regain its sovereignty. A fight that was particularly long and hard. In 2014, there were the huge Maidan demonstrations, during which Ukrainians, European flags in hand, demonstrated their desire to join Europe, shouting loud and clear: “That’s where we want to go, in that direction.” So when the Russians invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, I told myself that it was Europe that we were attacking and that it was absolutely necessary to help them resist in the face of this outlawed aggression which called into question absolutely all international treaties. Maidan and kyiv are, in my eyes, essential for the dream I have of seeing the United States of Europe really exist. And in addition, there is this magnificent phrase from President Zelensky, “I do not want taxi, I want ammunition.” He doesn’t want to be exfiltrated either by the GIGN or by the Marines, he wants to stay and fight. If he wants to fight then we join him; Finally, in this case, I join the country.

When are you leaving for Kyiv?

I made the decision to leave very quickly, before it became too difficult to reach kyiv, and above all because I told myself that terrible things could happen. It was important for me to be alongside the Ukrainians in order to be able to testify. Because after seeing, at the start of the conflict, the 60 km of Russian tanks all around the Ukrainian capital, I said to myself: “But what is their plan? What is their war goal? Occupy? Besiege like Sarajevo or crush like Grozny?” So I arrive in kyiv on March 11, 2022, after two days of a very complicated trip.

So you go alone with your iPhone to film…

Yes, I’m going with an iPhone 13, which was completely new for me because I had never shot with a phone. My universe is not at all digital, I learned to film with film cameras, with different lenses. I filmed every day not knowing what was going to happen an hour later, just as I tamed the iPhone as I went. In the end, it turned out to be the ideal tool for my film. Besides, in the end credits, I don’t say “film directed by Romain Goupil” but “filmed by Romain Goupil”. Because I film without staging, without organizing, but on the other hand by choosing frames, silences. I try to translate this atmosphere of a state of war, which is made up only of expectation and anguish. We do not know at all where we are going and if a tragedy will occur.

“There is a very particular climate between the sirens, the muffled noises in the distance, the fact that I am not in my country… Everything plunges me into permanent anxiety.”

Romain Goupil

at franceinfo

Were you able to shoot in the city?

Filming in a city in a state of emergency and permanent threat is impossible. All patrols and checkpoints think that if we film, it is to record their positions and perhaps harm them. So they systematically check the phones and erase what was shot in the city. We could walk around, but filming was too complicated. Outside the city, being on the side of the army, it was possible. They understood that journalists even had an interest in filming. So I could turn and show the ruins, the way everything was devastated, ravaged after the occupation by the Russians.

Were you scared ?

In fact, I was constantly awake, alert day after day, hour after hour, night after night. I thought : “What will happen militarily? Does Putin want to conquer the whole of Ukraine by first seizing Kiev? Then stage a coup like in Belarus and bring out a new leader from army or society and set it up like a puppet? Is that their goal? Are they going to occupy, bomb? How is it going to be?” I am with people who are resisting by staying in kyiv but who do not know what will happen. It is total uncertainty.

What did you want to do when you arrived in Ukraine?

I didn’t know exactly what I was going to be able to do, I had no plans. What I wanted was to be closer to a Ukrainian family in order to follow the events with them day after day. So I looked for a family, but the threat was such that the families had left for Europe and especially for Poland. All the families were broken up: the men had stayed, some to fight, but most of the women and children had left. So following a family was illusory. I hadn’t taken the measure of what was happening.

How do you end up in a circus?

In fact Rémy Ourdan, senior reporter at World, who was there when I arrived, had made a little subject on the kyiv circus that he had not used. He tells me : “SO you will have a family in the larger sense: the circus family. And their resistance may interest you.“ I then discovered this big family and also a real Noah’s ark with lots of animals. Because if the 30 people, out of the 300 that this circus had before the war, stay in kyiv, it is to take care of the animals.

Doesn’t that seem ridiculous to you, this care given to animals, while thousands of Ukrainians are losing their lives?

This may seem ridiculous indeed, but in fact it is not. Victoria, for example, who takes care of small animals, had the possibility of leaving to join her family who had taken refuge in Poland, but she decided to stay and join the resistance. For to resist is to remain and to hope. We are at this moment at the very beginning of the conflict, and all the members of this circus, the director at the head, want to believe that the war will not last, that the public and life will return to this circus. But above all Victoria, like her comrades, does not want to abandon the weakest, namely the animals. “If I leave, my colleagues won’t have time to take care of these beasts. As long as I can stay, I want defend the weakest among us. Those who cannot choose, she told me. If you don’t feed the animals, they die! Edouard, one of the healers, told me: “We have a duty in relation to animals that we have tamed.” It is a sentence of Saint-Exupéry that he transforms into a Ukrainian saying. These animals, with whom they work, were born in the circus and therefore they consider it their duty to protect and care for them. They cannot abandon them.

Taking care of the weakest finally acts as a therapy on these Circassians…

In a way, yes. Animals smell everything, so these men and women I met said to me: “We force ourselves to put on a good face, because they sense when we’re nervous, when we raise our voices.” They all acted out in front of the horses and ponies, for example, and acted as if everything was normal when there were constant alarms and explosions. They were protecting each other after all. But staying and continuing to work as they do is a very strong form of resistance in my eyes.

What impressed you the most?

It was their way of coping with an unpredictable situation and their very strong hope. And above all their way of starting over tirelessly, day after day, their work relying on the animals, telling themselves that tomorrow they may be able to open the circus to the public again. This marked me remarkably, this way of deceiving a terrible situation in relation to their personal existence, and this, through their daily tasks, which they repeated as if nothing had happened, if one can say…

Were you able to show them the film?

Yes, because I went back to kyiv in November to show them. It was a very complicated period during which heaps of missiles were falling everywhere, but the projection went well. The whole circus was able to see all the work that had been done with them and find out how I had edited the film, what I had decided to tell. The film still exists in kyiv since it is still screened in the circus or in the city’s film schools. And for my part, I keep them informed of the life of the film in France. It will also be shown at the cinema in Paris at the beginning of March.