The award-winning documentary filmmaker was on her way to Eastern Ukraine, where she had spent the previous three years filming her latest feature, “We Will Not Fade Away,” which premieres Feb. 22 in the Generation 14plus section at theFighting in the Donbas region’s long-running conflict had intensified, and she had hoped to help evacuate the protagonists of the film, which follows five teenagers in the war-torn region struggling to live normal teenage lives.
Kovalenko, whose previous documentary features have played at IDFA and Sheffield Doc/Fest, had a hopeful vision for “We Will Not Fade Away,” which was originally meant to follow her characters through a pioneering form of “adventure therapy” for youths living in war zones. As the film begins in 2019, her five protagonists are preparing for a trip to the Himalayas — an expedition, she said, that would show “how dreams can still change your life and how you can illuminate this dark world.
For the director, completing “We Will Not Fade Away” suddenly felt like a futile exercise once the war began. “I felt completely powerless as a documentary filmmaker, what I could do with my camera. Am I useful or not?” she said. Instead, she joined a battalion of volunteers fighting on the war’s frontline “because I felt that was much more effective.”
“I felt that we really have to fight now…so the Russians won’t destroy our country,” she said. “I didn’t want to go to France or some other country. I wanted to stay in Ukraine, and I want my son to grow up in Ukraine.”