Before the full-scale war, Oleh Arkhanhorodsky mainly shot portraits, art nude, and event videos. The war touched Oleh’s family at the very beginning (before 2014, his grandparents lived in Luhansk), but at that time there was no war reflected in his work. The situation changed on February 24, 2022. With the start of the full-scale invasion, a fairly logical answer to the question “what should an operator do when a war starts?” was to begin filming it. Almost immediately, alongside volunteering at a military hospital, Oleh started documenting the destruction of once peaceful and well-kept streets. The pain of people whose homes were affected by the war.

The extremely difficult and often terrifying work carried out by the military. At that time, the director had no experience working in combat zones, no first aid skills, no ability to recognize by sound which shell was flying overhead, and like other correspondents, he learned everything on the spot. Now, after four years have passed, and when a place to sleep is sometimes an abandoned house somewhere in Donetsk region, these very specific skills seem to have settled in his mind for a long time.

"It is unfortunate that such work exists, but we will do it well. For more than 9 years I have been professionally creating video content. My path in this field began after compulsory military service — back then I immersed myself in video editing and later grew into a film editor. I worked for a long time in investigative journalism and media projects (“Hromadske”, “Bihus.Info”, “Radio Svoboda”) and helped people launch new formats from scratch. Later I studied cinematography at the Ukrainian Film School, but unfortunately I did not get the chance to fully establish myself in the film industry".

With the start of the full-scale invasion, Kyrylo Sharov’s professional focus inevitably changed. He edited documentary films about the war and worked with the Public Interest Journalism Lab. Later he moved to Suspilne Kultura — sincerely hoping that working with Eurovision and other purely peaceful content would allow him to at least somewhat distract himself from the events around him.

But you cannot escape reality. When the time came to join the military, an opportunity arose to become part of the communications unit of the “Rubizh” brigade. Kyrylo realized that this was not just a chance, but an opportunity to maintain the experience accumulated over the years, and also to develop it in a direction useful for society. It was here that Kyrylo Sharov began to partially use his operator background.

Before he was mobilized, his wife was very worried that Kyrylo might come to like all this adrenaline. “And, honestly, she was right,” the director says. “Now my skills work in completely different, extreme conditions, where capturing history has to happen here and now.”