Film Bucha: A Painful Story Based On True Events In Ukraine.

By Daria Dzysiuk.

Ukrainian docudrama “Bucha” takes viewers on a painful journey of living under Russian occupation in the suburbs of Kyiv.

“Never thought we’d be bombed by Russians,” says an elderly woman in Ukrainian as she makes her way out of the rubble that only two days earlier was her family home.

I’m watching this scene, from the film “Bucha”, in my apartment in Kyiv, and just as she finishes this line, I suddenly hear sirens blaring outside my window. Ukraine’s capital is under missile attack, and residents are asked to proceed to the nearest shelter. Watching a film about Russia’s bombing, while experiencing it in real life feels somehow surreal.

“Bucha” (2024) is a new feature film, a two-hour docudrama about the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Kyiv itself was nearly captured and nearby towns came under a month-long Russian occupation. In that time, at least 1,374 civilians were killed in Kyiv’s suburbs. After Ukraine regained control of the area, mass graves and other evidence of atrocities were discovered in one of the occupied towns, Bucha, an upscale community 15 miles northeast of Kyiv. The film’s director, Stanislav Tiunov, and producer, Oleksandr Shchur, dedicate the film to the memory of all the victims. Shchur, who lived near Bucha, had to get his pregnant wife to safety right when invading troops were moving in. That experience prompted him to write the script and make this film recounting the horrors of life under the Russian occupation for the world to see.

At the heart of the film is a man named Kostia, who wears a red sweater and black puffer jacket and drives a white Tesla Tesla . Kostia’s character is based on Konstantyn Gudauskas, a real resident of Bucha, which was under Russian fire from the moment the invasion began. As the first explosions splinter Ukraine’s skies, Kostia embarks on his first rescue mission: to evacuate from Bucha to unoccupied Kyiv, a family—a mother and two children. They become the first of more than two hundred lives Kostia saves over the course of the occupation. Like his real-life counterpart, Kostia is a Jewish refugee from Kazakhstan, who settled in Ukraine and still has his Kazakh passport, which becomes his ticket through Russian checkpoints. The Russians reluctantly allow him and his vehicle to cross into the unoccupied zone. “You Kazakhs are next,” one of the soldiers says to Kostia, menacingly encapsulating the Kremlin’s obsession with the “Russian world,” which demands that former Soviet Republics remain in Russia’s sphere of influence, without regard for their sovereignty and national identity.

The film shows what is impossible to imagine, or comprehend, without seeing: the brutality of the Russian occupation of peaceful, residential areas and the perils of fleeing, crossing checkpoints, dealing with Russian soldiers, who shoot and kill without warning, without provocation.

It’s remarkable to follow Kostia’s personal journey against the backdrop of the unfolding national tragedy. The film shows hundreds of Ukrainians, young and old, with petrified eyes, cramped at train stations, trying to escape west, away from Russian missiles. There are scenes depicting road checkpoints, in the fields, with Ukrainian and Russian flags flying over them, on opposite sides of the separation lines. All very realistic, making the viewer relive the horror Ukrainians experienced during the first months after Russia attacked.

I see Kostia, who is in search of safe routes from Russian-controlled to Ukrainian areas, and the Russian troops that are gradually settling down and getting comfortable in Bucha, Vorzel, Borodyanka, Irpin and other towns, the names of which are too familiar to residents of Kyiv; names that are now recognized by people around the world, unfortunately from the tragic news reports following Russia’s withdrawal.

The film’s portrayal of Russian soldiers’ conduct is realistic, based on real survivor accounts. They speak in very brutal language, unfiltered, and filled with curse words. “We came to clean your town from the mud!” proclaims Nikolai Ivanovich, a colonel who appears to oversee the entire operation in the Kyiv region. He says it calmly, while holding a gun to a man’s head. The man is on his knees, his hands bound. Nikolai Ivanovich pulls the trigger and small rivers of blood start flowing into the street gutter.

The Russians want to cleanse the territory of anything Ukrainian – people, symbols, language, music, a tattoo on the arm of a Ukrainian man they capture. The film only depicts accounts from the Kyiv region. But the same military strategy, that includes murder, torture and rape of the civilian population, is, to this day, being employed in Ukrainian towns under Moscow’s occupation, to instill fear in civilians and crush any resistance among the local population.

The film “Bucha” is painful to watch. Yet, it gives the viewer a perfect explanation of the reasons why Ukrainians fight so vigorously for their country. It is an existential fight against a genocidal enemy.

Edited by Karina L. Tahiliani