The filmmakers behind the Oscar-nominated documentary Porcelain War, Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev, unravel how they worked together 6,000 miles apart to tell the story of three artists who chose to stay behind in their war-torn country of Ukraine.
“Art is the very last thing you think about during war but that [these artists] were going to continue creating, that sparked within me a million questions,” says Bellomo of his motivations for the feature.
The filmmaker teamed up with one of the artists, Leontvev, who co-directed and starred in the film with Bellomo guiding him via Zoom. “We were separated by time zones, by war zones, by different countries. Everything was against us, and we did not speak the same language,” explains Bellomo, who had to teach Leontvev to use a camera via a translator.
“When I picked up the camera, someone picked up a riffle in my place,” recalls Leontvev. “I said to her ‘Now you are in fight instead of me’. And she answered: “Now you have much more impactful and much more powerful weapon than a riffle’.”
Porcelain War is nominated for best documentary feature at the Oscars and won the Grand Jury Prize for the US documentary category at Sundance. It was distributed in North America by Picturehouse.
Watch the full interview above.
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