A few months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of their country began, a group of five young Ukrainian men and women, not all of whom were professional actors, collaboratively developed a theatrical production. They examined their experiences of armed conflict and persecution against the backdrop of the Maidan uprising of 2013 and the onset of war in the country’s East. The motifs of Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet (and German playwright Heiner Mueller’s postmodern riff on it, Hamlet Machine) provided a loose, thematic framework for the production, H-Effect. Guided by theatre director Rosa Sarkisian, it served as a therapeutic vehicle for navigating psychological wounds and reintegrating the cast’s experiences into the nation’s collective memory.
This rehearsal process is captured in Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski’s The Hamlet Syndrome, an intense and raw insight into the sheer scale of trauma that a generation of young Ukrainians are carrying. Conversations between the individual cast members with their relatives and other survivors of recent political violence open the film out from the closed theatre environment, adding further emotional texture and testimony for a harrowing, multi-layered reckoning with modern-day Ukraine’s psychological landscape, that has only gained in urgent resonance as Russia’s invasion has drastically escalated, with no end in sight.
Only two members of the cast are professional actors; several have been active on the war’s front lines. Katya joined a volunteer battalion and reflects on what it was like to be one of the few women fighting at the front. She is now part of the East-Ukrainian Center for Civic Initiatives, and interviews another woman about violence she underwent under interrogation. Such work she considers essential for her own sense of rehabilitation, even though it can be triggering. Slavik fought in the Donbas, where he was taken prisoner and tortured by separatist forces. Rodion, a stylist and costume designer from Donbas, has been subjected to brutal abuse by the police, far-right elements, and his own family due to his sexual orientation. He condemns the hypocrisy of state authorities who covet a glossy image on human rights to meet conditions for EU membership, while turning their backs on the day-to-day reality.
Slavik, who has never met anyone from the LGBTQ community, overcomes his prejudice through working with Rodion on the production. Roman, an actor by trade, went to the front line as an army medic, and is now struggling to come to terms with the enormity of what he was thrown into, as he dealt with the gravely injured and corpses. Oksana is the only other professional actor, with no direct battle experience but a burning, feminist sense of injustice over inequities in her industry. She grapples with a sense of frustration that her concerns and difficulties are not taken seriously compared to members of the cast who have seen combat, and that her attitude to nationalist symbolism is controversial to those who link the flag to the burials of their comrades.
The differences and commonalities shared within this fascinating mix of individuals make for gripping, high-tension exchanges, particularly as the raging anger and pain of trauma is never far from spilling over, as well as providing fertile ground for new forms of community and understanding, as the actors dig deep for a sense of what being Ukrainian, and indeed what being alive, means to them. As they revisit “impossible choices” they have made, in devastating and unimaginable circumstances, a Shakespearean weight of tragedy is by no means a far stretch for the production: these participants have already, in their twenties and thirties, lived through existential extremes of the human experience. To fight or not to fight; to stay put or leave?
A final intertitle updates us on the whereabouts of the cast, after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and we sense they have been thrust right back into the realm of insoluble dilemmas. The audience applause as they take their bows on a successful opening night suggests solidarity amid adversity is far from a mere spectre for this generation of Ukrainians — even if heroism is a concept that rings hollow for many who have felt the war’s terrible realities.
Directors: Elwira Niewiera, Piotr Rosolowski
Cast: Kateryna Kotliarova, Oksana Cherkashyna, Roman Kryvdyk, Oleg-Rodion Shurygin-Gerkalov, Yaroslav Havianets
Cinematography: Piotr Rosolowski
Editor: Agata Ciernak
Producers: Andreas Banz, Matthias Miegel, Magdalena Kaminska, Agata Szymanska, Robert Thalheim
Sound Design: Jonathan Schorr
Music: John Gurtler, Jan Miserre
Production companies: Balapolis (Poland), Kundschafter Filmproduktion (Germany)
Sales Agent: Katarzyna Wilk
Venue: DOK Leipzig (Audience award competition)
In Ukrainian
85 minutes
