the shattered destiny of Serhiy Stakhovsky, a Ukrainian tennis player who went to war

The documentary “On Real Balls – Stakhovsky, from tennis to war”, available on the L’Équipe platform, Explore, recounts the fight of Ukrainian tennis player Serhiy Stakhovsky, engaged on the Ukrainian front against Russia for two years.

The documentary With live bullets – Stakhovsky, from tennis to waravailable on Explore, the platform The Team, is signed by the journalist Nicolas Jambou. In this poignant film, he follows a Ukrainian, now 38 years old, named Serhiy Stakhovsky. Those who follow tennis may know him because he is one of the two best Ukrainian players of the last twenty years. He is a star in his country who has won four ATP tournaments, even going so far as to beat Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2013. A player very attached to his country, as the director explains, and who in 2014, at moment of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, was one of the rare Ukrainian athletes to get involved by denouncing the invasion and refusing to speak to Russian journalists.

“I’m heading towards chaos and I don’t know if I’m going to come back”

In February 2022, Russia declared war on Ukraine, when he had just retired and was on vacation with his wife – of Russian origin and from whom he has since divorced – and his children in Dubai. Serhiy Stakhovsky immediately decides to enlist and go to the front to defend his country. It arrives on the fourth day of war, at a time when millions of Ukrainians are fleeing and crossing borders to seek safety. He goes the opposite way and says to himself at that moment: “I’m heading towards chaos and I don’t know if I’m going to come back.”

The documentary With live ammunition – Stakhovsky is not “a war report”, explains Nicolas Jambou. He filmed his interviews with relatives and with the former tennis player, during his leave and during military training. A cameraman even spent two days on the front near Bakhmut and had access to “dozens of videos filmed by his unit comrades and by himself, with a phone or a GoPro”.

“What makes this documentary strong is being able to see quite rare images from the front, and really being with Serhiy Stakhovsky on the war field.”

Nicolas Jambou, director

at franceinfo

Since then, Serhiy Stakhovsky has gone into war mode, he no longer thinks too much about what happens to him on a daily basis according to Nicolas Jambou.

From his memory as a teenager who followed tennis, the director remembers a player who was calm and smiling. But in kyiv he meets someone very cold, very harsh and very distant with his emotions. “Between the two moments when I went to follow him to kyiv, I saw a change,” says the journalist, explaining that at the time, things were going badly for Ukraine, because the Russians were progressing in the front zone.

After two years of war, he is still in “a unit where they alternate between 5 to 6 weeks on the front and 3 to 4 weeks in kyiv, in mission preparation”, indicates the journalist. Then he adds that“he should leave on a mission near Chasiv Yar, which is one of the towns currently threatened by the advance of the Russians in the East”.

Watch this interview on video: