Famous Russian journalist Andrey Loshak has directed several short documentaries about the 2017 Aurora Prize finalists for the Ceremony that took place in Yerevan, Armenia, on May 28, 2017. He talked to us about working with time limits, recognizing the real heroes and the importance of security when shooting at certain locations.
When Aurora offered you a chance to go to the distant corners of the world to film the Aurora Prize finalists, you already had a job – you were Editor-in-Chief of the Takie Dela project. How did you react to this pitch? Why and how did you decide to accept it?
Professionally speaking I am, first and foremost, a reporter. In the last years, after I had left the NTV Channel, I directed some documentaries but only sporadically. I didn’t collaborate with any channels on a regular basis, except maybe TV Rain. When I was offered a position of Editor-in-Chief of Takie Dela, I accepted it because it’s a great cause. That media is a peculiar one, since the state doesn’t have anything to do with it at all. Nor do the sponsors – you know, serious people with huge wallets who eventually start telling you how to write. It was a project designed to raise funds for a good cause. A project that has something in common with Aurora.
I loved the idea and I worked there for a year. But after some time, naturally, I felt restless. I’m used to going places, getting involved in dangerous stuff. Basically, my need to report had resurfaced: I got bored, I missed being on the move. And that’s when I got a call from Ruben Vardanyan, Co-Founder of the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative’s, who had an offer for me. It all came together very naturally because at some level this is an extension of the humanitarian topics I was working with.
You understand that you’ll be doing something good and important and you’ll have trips and adventures on top of that, which was all I was missing when I was Editor-in-Chief. When I took a look at the list of the finalists, or of their countries, to be more precise, the hair rose on my head. I read their stores and said yes because these are the people you want to shake hands with, let alone tell their stories to the world, which is a fantastic opportunity. This really is an amazing chance not everyone is lucky to get.
There was another thing – when we launched Takie Dela, we decided we were not going to write only about pain and suffering. It was a project to raise funds for the NGOs who support the most vulnerable citizens, from homeless to alcoholics and drug addicts, so, whoever needs help, really. We figured we would have about 70% articles about pain and suffering and what needs to be done to help people and the rest would be positive stories. But that’s the way the media work. In the end you still find yourself only talking about the bad things.
The Aurora message, however, is very optimistic. As a matter of fact, it’s a story of hope. All these people who live in hell on earth, in places that are terrifying, probably in the scariest places on the planet, they are still victors. They manage to save others, they somehow make sure that good defeats evil. Ok, it’s on the local level, it’s not happening all over the planet but still. That was something I was missing as the Editor-in-Chief of Takie Dela. That was my chance.
By the way, last year I didn’t have time to do it but this year I wrote about almost all the finalists, the ones I’ve met. I also wrote about Tom <Catena>, because I know so much about him. Those are pretty long articles soon to be published on the Takie Dela site.
When you read the finalists’ stories, which parts did you want to highlight? What was the most important thing for you?
I had a clear task and that was to make short profiles. The time limit was painful to me because one can talk about these people for ages and actually wants to talk about these people for ages. But the films were made for the Ceremony and I had to comply with strict rules: when you have 5 finalists, you can only keep the audience focused on one of them for five minutes tops.
My task was to tell, in five minutes, an epic story. Each one of those people is an epic poem. There are both the Iliad and the Odyssey and you only have five minutes to tell them. You need to state your facts as briefly as possible but you also need to convey the emotions. The audience has to feel the horrors those people had to face, has to see the heroism that is apparently present in so many of us.
I mean, the stories are very different. Some people were born to be heroes. Say, Tom <Catena>, the American surgeon in Sudan. Due to his religious beliefs he has always wanted to be at the cutting edge, where he’s most needed, so that he could give, professionally, all he had. And when it comes to 26-year-old Syrian doctor Darvish, it was, to put it bluntly, an accident that put him in such a terrible situation. He never wanted to be a hero, but he found himself in certain circumstances and just happened to be one, even though he never thought he’d be. It turns out people are capable of extraordinary acts, capable of anything, really. You need to show that. On the one hand, you should tell an epic story, and on the other hand, you need to fill it to the brim with emotions. Ideally the audience should be weeping by the end but not with sadness. Those should be tears of hope.
The shooting took you to some conflict zones. How was your security ensured? How did that make you feel?
Last year with the inaugural prize things were a little complicated and we didn’t go to the most dangerous zones. I think the most dangerous one is Sudan. Then there’s the Central African Republic. It’s the poorest country in the world, which tells you all you need to know. It’s a terrifying place and we didn’t go there. We went to Rwanda and Pakistan, which is relatively safe. I was surprised by Rwanda because I read a lot of scary stories about the genocide that took place there 20 years ago, but now it’s a rather prosperous African country, a nice one.
The lengthiest trips we had were to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. It’s scary because the civil war has been raging for twenty years in the DRC. Everyone is fighting everyone. There are dozens of gangs and militant groups, there are people who are completely out of their minds and doing unspeakable things.
I remember when we were in the DRC we got back to the hotel one evening – and that’s the only normal hotel there, owned by some German guy. It was Friday evening, very relaxing, we were all tired. Then a girl joined us, a European girl. So she tells us she’s been working for a Swedish mission for two years. I asked her, aren’t you sick of being stuck in the middle of nowhere for two years? And she says yes, she is actually thinking about going back home because a month ago her best friend went missing. She was also Swedish. She worked for the UN and along with an American friend, a colleague, and some local aid workers went to a place where strange things were happening, to report them. They all went missing and a week ago their beheaded bodies were found. In moments like this you realize where you are. You realize that any white person could have been in place of that Swedish girl.
Somalia, however, is even scarier. You come to a country that is at war with a Muslim militant group with ties to Al-Qaeda. Their goal is to kill as many unfaithful as possible. You are their primary target but they often miss and kill the locals instead: they blow up before they reach their destination, killing 30-40 Somalians. Half of the city is in ruins and the rest of it looks like a fortress. It’s weird being a target.
By law the foreigners can’t travel without protection. It looks like this: you’re driven around in an armored SUV with bulletproof windows and in front of you there’s a pickup truck with 4-8 people armed with assault rifles. That’s how we were driving around the city. We were forbidden to go to half of the locations because it was too risky. The shooting process was weird: we were sitting in a car looking outside through the bulletproof glass. Wherever some sort of security could be achieved we were let out and would film for fifteen minutes, 30 minutes tops, or they would track us and try to organize an attack. We weren’t even staying at a hotel but at a real military base with double walls, fortifications, barbed wire and soldiers. That’s how the journalists work there.
The interview with the Syrian doctor would have been our most extreme trip but he was in a town controlled by the opposition and besieged by the Hezbollah. It was simply impossible to get there. It had nothing to do with the fact that our crew was Russian. They might have let us in but I doubt they’d ever let us out.
No journalists are posted there. Everything that had been sent from there during the five years of war was filmed on a mobile phone by some activists, and that’s what we were going to use for the film. But then we got lucky – as we were editing, the doctor managed to get out of there. The government and the opposition struck a political deal, allowing the opposition supporters to be let out of the city to the territories controlled by the opposition, and vice versa. So, he got out for the first time in five years. He spent five years there. A dentist, operating on the wounded children, he was the only surgeon there.
Darwish got to the territory controlled by the opposition and then left for Turkey, where he joined thousands of refugees who have lost their homeland and whose future is uncertain. We managed to film him at the Syrian border. We got arrested right away, naturally, because we didn’t have time to obtain all the permits and just started shooting without them. We ended up spending half a day at the Turkish police station. That happens, we got arrested in the DRC as well, but that time we managed to deal with it faster as the corruption is worse there. After that we couldn’t film outside in Turkey. We only managed to get a few shots with him on the street before we were banned. We also filmed an interview with him. It was a great source of material for the film, otherwise we’d only have the shaky hand camera footage to go with. As it was, we ended up with a solid story.
Have you ever gone to conflict zones or cover the consequences of war before or did you make an exception for Aurora?
When I worked for the NTV Channel I tried to avoid the topic of war because I don’t like it. There are poets of war who can tell interesting stories about it but I don’t get it. I always think that everybody is to blame, that it’s simply madness. Why can’t they just negotiate? Why can’t Israel come to an agreement with Palestine, or Russia with Ukraine? It makes no sense whatsoever.
I did this piece from Chechnya during the Second Chechen campaign when the republic was lying in ruins. I went to the capital, Grozny, and filmed local stand-up comedians and rappers that I found there. People were used to seeing bearded men with assault rifles but I showed them different Chechens. That’s what I was interested in.
I’m honored to be a part of Aurora and I feel that this mission is professionally challenging in a good way. I feel that together we are doing something great and useful.