Metallic Taste

While I’m writing this text, my mind takes me back a year ago, to a day when russia launched a full scale invasion on Ukraine. I faced the war, studying in Poland, where I experienced it mainly through volunteer work, I kept myself busy with. I mostly helped refugees fleeing from war to settle in Poland or travel to another country. During that time I made a lot of acquaintances that I cherish and heard a lot of stories I’ll never forget. The ones that struck me the most, were those told by children, some of whom were forced to flee without their parents, or sometimes were losing them along the way.

There’s a lot of talk about the greedy or anti-humane nature of war, but not enough about how unfair it is. Nobody deserves to be treated with violence, but those youngest truly deserve it the least. Facing something so drastic at this age left an unshakable mark on them, whether physical or mental. The fear lingered in their eyes, in how they spoke. And since it was so present in the experience I had during that time I decided to pour it out on the pages and set a story in the genre dependent on it - horror. My idea was to setup a movie as a horror one: a boy and his mother are hiding in the basement from a mysterious entity; and slowly reveal it to be a war drama. Being constantly horrified by the war atrocities committed by russia, I realized that reality is far more terrifying than any movie could portray; this was my way of expressing it.

“A glimpse into the world proves that horror is nothing other than reality” - Alfred Hitchcock

Since the core of the film was rooted in genre I wanted to treat it as such. Together with my DOP we were looking for inspiration in both war movies, such as “Come and see” or “The Painted Bird”, as well as genre ones, such as “A Quiet Place” and “Don’t Breathe”. We had long conversations about whether it’s the right way to approach something so intimate, so traumatic. We eventually settled on the idea that we can choose any form we want if we are going to tell the story with respect and base it around the fundamental human values. I was often asked whether it’s not too early to tackle this topic, my answer was always : an artist's perspective on war, amidst it, is as crucial, as the one examining it in retrospect. Maybe a selfish take, but I was willing to take the risk, since there was (and still is) no room in my mind for stories on any other subject.

This is how the body of the movie was formed, its heart was actually in front of me the whole time. It turned out to be a story of maturity forced by the extreme conditions. A situation, in which, to a lesser extent, I found myself on that day, a year ago.