It is being billed as Ukraine’s answer to Saving Private Ryan, updated for an age of drones.
The war movie Killhouse is an action thriller which shows off the latest in battlefield technology. Released this week, it features cameos by figures well known in Ukraine, including the nation’s former military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov. One missing person is Donald Trump. The film is conveniently set in 2024, when Washington and Kyiv were allies.
Its director, Liubomyr Levytskyi, said he was inspired by a real life story, when a couple trying to rescue relatives came under Russian attack. The man was badly wounded. A Ukrainian military unit nearby sent in a drone with a piece of paper. It said: “Follow me.” The woman followed the drone, dodging mines and bullets. Russian soldiers threw her unconscious husband into a trench. Incredibly, he survived.
“A friend of mine, a journalist, rang me and said: ‘Liubomyr, I’ve got this story – it’ll give you goosebumps.’” Levytskyi said. He added: “I was like: ‘Well, of course it will. I’ve seen so many of these stories already.’ It’s very hard to impress me with a story. Then I saw footage from the rescue operation. I couldn’t believe my eyes that this is real.”
The director made a 30-minute documentary, Follow Me, which he said got wide attention. “I realised that this story really strikes a chord, and people get it. Drones in general, well, they’re something new. And I thought, right, this story needs to be made into a film.”
The ensuing two-and-half hour film was shot last year in the Kyiv region. Levytskyi said he took artistic licence with the plot, adding a 12-year-old girl kidnapped by Russians. Scenes take place in the White House situation room, in occupied eastern Ukraine and a farmhouse in a deadly grey zone. There is a shootout and car chase in downtown Kyiv.
The US journalist Audrey MacAlpine – who plays a version of herself – said filming had to stop on several occasions. “There were air raid alerts. We had to hide. It was a war within a war,” she said. The actor Denis Kapustin said some cast members would nap in a bomb shelter, waiting for the threat to pass. Of the blurring of fiction and reality, he said: “The movie is totally meta and postmodern.”
Kapustin said Killhouse captures the complicated multi-level nature of war today. “It’s a race for technological superiority,” he added. Soldiers took part alongside professional actors, with pyrotechnics used to simulate explosions. After filming ended, Kapustin joined the real-life unit in which his character serves, the 3rd Assault Brigade, a part of the 3rd Army Corps.
He is now a drone operator. In one scene, a group of Ukrainian special forces soldiers clear a building, shooting dead many Russians. Kapustin acknowledged that the war is fought at a distance across much of the frontline, but said street-to-street fighting takes place in shattered eastern towns such as Vovchansk. “It’s realistic. The plan is not to lose people,” he said.
The reaction from Ukrainian audiences has been positive. “It’s interesting to see people from the news such as Budanov on screen,” Maria Hlazunova, who worked for the Dovzhenko Centre, Ukraine’s film archive, said at this week’s Kyiv premiere. She added: “It’s like fiction mixed with fact. The film is super-patriotic, which is as it should be. There are a few cheesy moments. Overall it does a really good job.”
Ukraine’s two main intelligence agencies, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU), were involved in the production. They provided US Humvee and MaxxPro vehicles as well as a Black Hawk helicopter. The drama showcases Ukraine’s latest homemade drones, such as a catapult-launched reconnaissance model known as Shark.
The film’s makers say it is the first feature in cinema history to be use footage taken by real combat drones. They are preparing an English-language version for distributors in the US and are considering creating a four-episode version for streaming platforms such as Netflix. Killhouse was made without state support and had a $1.1m budget.
Like Saving Private Ryan, the story has a moral question at its heart: is it worth sacrificing many lives to save one person, in this case a stolen child? According to Ukraine’s army media unit, Killhouse depicts “something the world often misses in the daily flood of frontline updates”. “Ukrainian soldiers are not just fighting to hold territory. They are crossing into grey zones to bring civilians home,” it said.
Levytskyi suggested that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, badly underestimated Ukraine’s resilience and will to survive when he launched his 2022 full-scale invasion, thinking his armed forces could overwhelm Kyiv in a few days. More than four years later, the war continues. “The enemy is very afraid when Ukrainians are united. That is a fact,” the director said.
Additional reporting by Jake Jacobs