fAmong missiles and images from TV shows, the viewer immediately realizes that he is in a doubly minefield. Two-time Academy Award-winning actor, director and producer Sean Penn brought a very “physical” and personal contribution to the Berlinale, Super powera documentary film about Volodymyr Zelensky and the war in Ukraine which broke out while he was in Kiev on February 24, 2022.
The meeting between the actor and director and the Ukrainian president. (Handle)
The initial intention was to make a film about the president, recounting his life from his beginnings in the world of entertainment. But things suddenly changed, and in the work shot together with Aaron Kaufman, as well as images of war and rubble, and interviews with key figures in the Ukrainian world, there is a lot of the Penn man. We see this in the cinema, where he takes Ukrainian soldiers to watch Top Gun: Maverick, to then call actor Miles Teller via video call and have him talk to real soldiers. Then there are exclusive interviews with Zelensky and key figures in Ukrainian politics. Aware that he is not a journalist, it must be said, he is keen to underline that he has asked the questions that a “normal” person would ask. A contribution perhaps a little naïve but sincere, his, in the defense of freedom. And always with an electronic cigarette in hand.
How did you work on a documentary that started out as a portrait of a man and ended up with an exclusive story of war?
«Everything changed from the original idea, and even the large crew that worked on it had to adapt: it became more and more restricted, until it was reduced to me and Aaron. This changed the whole look of the project, because our lives had changed in the meantime».
How did you decide to move, at the time?
«Following our nose. In a way it is as if we sat in a restaurant the following week going over our experience: it would have been exactly what he sees in the film. When we returned to Kiev months later, we moved differently. We pushed each other to give back the most honest version of what we actually saw. I’m trying to say that Super power it is the story I would tell of what I saw to someone else».
The perks of being Sean Penn?
“When I need to jump on a plane and go somewhere, I can. I don’t have to ask permission from a major film company. And then, being known, I have access to a certain type of situation, and this works like a double-edged sword: the assumption is that you are there as a guest of the state, not as a journalist or documentary maker. So you have to keep reiterating “Look, it’s not about me…”. But these two elements, the freedom I have to organize my work and what I have access to, are important parts of my activism. It’s true for my humanitarian organization, CORE, and it’s true for this film.”
Was it difficult to walk the line between being in the film and not being the protagonist?
“That was easy, because unless you walk into the frame with extensive knowledge of the subject, what you can do is move around by asking questions. We knew we weren’t trying to make a movie for the Amazon audience, we’re two kids asking questions they don’t know the answers to, asking the things anyone would ask.”
Was there anything you revealed that you feel hasn’t been covered enough by the media?
“I started to worry about our education system in the United States. Because talking to children and making them understand our history of the 60s or 70s is difficult. When we were in Ukraine, they told you about a 1,000-year-old story, and used it to explain something that was happening today. Knowing their history they knew which side they wanted to “detach” from, to evolve. They’ve been building it over the past thirty years, peaking in 2014.”
What surprised you the most?
“Kiev itself. I don’t know what Ukraine was like before, I didn’t know how different it was from Moldova or Belarus. You get there and it feels like New York, the place was beautiful and a lot was going on. There was a very moving energy, the fashion is beautiful, it’s full of artists and singers and we were going to show all of that, which I tried to put into the film. We didn’t want to show just all those beautiful buildings that had been bombed. There was culture, something was happening, before the bombings».
What is the difference between what we see on the news and the images in your docu?
«A long documentary, with individual interviews, has the breadth to allow us to observe the personality of the Ukrainian people. I think it helps to build interest and empathy, as well as show dramatic elements like family separation and displacement. A spectator understands what it will take to put that country back together once it wins this war.”
You made Zelensky speak live at the Berlinale…
«He said beautiful words, the English he speaks now is much better than it used to be. It is very important to speak to the public more effectively, without translators. He’s unstoppable. And just like everything in Ukraine, with every advance of the Russians, the Ukrainians feel stronger.”
You met Putin many years ago, together with Jack Nicholson: do you remember?
“It was two weeks after meeting President Bush, she said she looked into his eyes and knew he was a man she could trust. I had a similar reaction, I said to myself “Wrong, wrong wrong!”. Then I made a joke about the president, and he told me “this report is too important to joke about it ..”. “Ok”, I replied, “goodbye”».
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