A Wicklow man making a documentary about the war in Ukraine has opened up on seeing "burned bodies" still in tanks and removing his press badge to stop being targeted as he drove for his life.
Finn Boylan spent five months in the war-torn country filming for his project on the Irish involvement in the conflict. The 30-year-old plans to return to the country soon to finish the film, and is currently in negotiations around broadcasting it when it is finished later this year.
The MetFilm School graduate only started making movies when he was 24, and his work has already taken him around the world - he once hitchhiked from Germany to Iran, a journey of 800km. But his graduation from school coincided with the Maidan Revolution in Kyiv in 2014, and Finn admits his fascination with Ukraine is what led him to travel to the country just three weeks after war broke out.
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He said: “I was glued to it; it was like watching the images of nationalist riots in Northern Ireland in the 70s and 80s. I had never seen anything like it in the 21st Century."
Finn arrived in Ukraine on March 12, 2022, amid freezing conditions. He said that the scenes as he crossed the border into Poland were "like nothing I’d seen before".
"Thousands of aid vehicles trying to get in were stalled as military convoys full of weapons from NATO countries poured across," he recalls. “When I finally got to the Ukrainian side, the human cost of what was happening was laid bare to see.
"Hundreds of thousands of people crammed together in a line that stretched kilometres with all the belongings they could carry. The suffering on their faces was surreal and gave me a taste of what I was going to witness in the coming weeks.
"It was freezing out, the elderly, the women and children were struggling to move in these arctic conditions. As I drove further away from the border, I could not believe the line of buses filled with more people, desperate to escape, it stretched for what seemed like forever."
Finn, who is dyslexic, arrived in Lviv and met three men looking to join the war effort along the way - an American ex-Marine, a Swedish sniper, and an Irish mechanic. He then met up with a Ukrainian filmmaker contact in Kyiv, who took them to multiple safe houses, and later travelled to the front line in Irpin.
Finn said: “The destruction was like nothing I had ever seen in my life; every building was completely devastated. Bomb craters like an asteroid had fallen from space, Russian tanks littered the battle space and of course the remains of dozens of dead Russians who had been left behind.
“Many others did not get that far, their burned bodies still smoking behind the wheel of the car, as they took a direct hit from a tank round. Every Ukrainian soldier we saw was busy salvaging what munitions they could from the destroyed Russian positions.
"Their mood was high, they knew they had broken the back of the Russian attack and had held the line. Everywhere I looked there were bodies of dead Russians dead, some complete, many in pieces, others melted into their tanks.
“At this point I found it very hard to film, I did not want to make a snuff film. I wanted to show the horror of what had happened but being as tactful and respectful as possible. These were of course human beings; husbands, sons, brothers, and fathers they were all loved by someone.
“I tried to find a body that was whole and film from an angle that was tactful but left nothing to the imagination. I realised here, that there is no soft side to war, no one dies in a nice way, no camera angle can make this experience tactful. War is hell.”
A month later in May, Finn experienced one of the scariest incidents of his life. He said: “I was with a Ukrainian press officer 13km behind the line in a village called Bilozerka.
"It had recently been liberated by the Ukrainians. At this point I was driving my own press vehicle which gave me a lot more mobility on the front.
“We arrived and parked outside the local high school. It had served as the headquarters for Russian operations in the area. We were in the building no less than 5 minutes when the first shell came in.
"Boom! It hit only a few hundred meters away from the building. We took cover in a hallway beside a stairwell, but the shelling continued, getting closer and closer.”
Realising they were being targeted, Finn knew they had to make a run for it, and after narrowly escaping several explosions, they made it to their car and sped down a dirt road to safety. Finn explained: “My car had clear press markings visible from the air, so the Russians knew why I was there. I guess they didn’t want any images of their military defeat on this front getting out.
“I consider myself very lucky to be alive and grateful for every moment I have lived from that point on. Every day is a bonus, I should have died that afternoon.”
Finn has worked hard to keep his emotions in check after that near miss - but he is plowing ahead with finishing the film and, hopefully, having it ready to premiere by the end of this year. “Coming back to the edit was where my emotions, at times, got the better of me," he said.
"My camera was my shield. But in the edit I did not have this shield. I did not have adrenaline coursing through my veins. I was no longer in a fight or flight mode. I was forced to go through every second of my footage and re live it, over and over and over again.
“There were many moments I captured on film that I simply had no recollection of. Whether it was my brain filtering out the trauma of it all, I’m not sure. But I was not prepared for how difficult the editing process was going to be.
“I found it very hard to put the camera down and take a break. There is no break for the Ukrainians, this is their reality, and I am just a witness. I have the luxury of being able to turn back and take a break, they do not.
“I found it beneficial to focus on the purely human stories that are wrapped up in the wider context of what's happening here. I ask myself, what human stories would I relate to as an outsider looking in?
“One thing I can relate to is the fear my girlfriend when I am in a dangerous environment. Although I am in extreme danger intermittently, my girlfriend worries every minute of every day for my safety.
“I tried to find a soldier to film with on the front and then get access to film with his family and I was successful. I found a soldier whose family members are refugees in Ireland. When I got home, I started the filming process with his family. I found the emotions his wife expressed were the same as my girlfriend’s when I am in Ukraine.
“I went back to Ukraine and filmed again with the same soldier on the frontline. This story brings the enormity of such a conflict into focus through the emotions that anyone can relate to, fear is a universal emotion.”
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