The Ukrainian Series Made in the War Zone

In the opening scene of In Her Car, a young Ukrainian woman stands before the bombed-out wreckage of her family home, screaming her sister’s name. There’s been a Russian missile attack, and the house, like the woman’s life, lies in ruins.

Two years into the Ukraine war — the second anniversary of the Russian invasion is this Saturday — the world has become accustomed to, some would say numbed to, an endless stream of similar scenes of destruction coming out of Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Donetsk. The devastation wrought by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war has become horrifyingly commonplace.

But this is not the nightly news. In Her Car is a drama series, conceived, produced, and shot in Ukraine in the wake of the Feb. 24 invasion that explores the psychological impact of the war on ordinary Ukrainians.

As the U.S. Congress continues to debate funding for Ukraine, with Republican Speaker Mike Johnson still blocking passage of a $60 billion bill that Kyiv considers essential if it is to hold off the Russian advance, this new, 10-part series gives viewers a glimpse of what war looks like from the inside.

In Her Car follows Lydia, a psychologist with anxiety issues on her way to Kharkiv to divorce her faithless husband who spots a young woman at a bus station and decides to give a young woman a lift. [Olga, the one screaming in the opening scene]. On the way, Russia attacks. The missiles rain down. Lydia’s world, like that of all Ukrainians, is torn apart. Struck by a need to act, the therapist decides to become a transporter, taking people in her car wherever they need to go.

Showrunner Eugen Tunik conceived In Her Car in the months after the invasion and brought the idea to a pitch competition in Berlin in the summer of 2022. He didn’t win, but Gaumont producers Andreas F. Bareiss and Rainer Marquass were on the jury, and they jumped on the idea. In near-record time, the series was set up as a first-of-its-kind co-production between Ukraine-based Starlight Media and Gaumont with backing from public broadcasters across Europe, including France Télévisions and Germany’s ZDF. On Wednesday, Feb. 21, it debuted simultaneously in Germany, France, Switzerland (SRF) and across Scandinavian on public channels in SVT (Sweden), DR (Denmark), YLE (Finland), and NRK TV (Norway). Next up is Iceland (on RÚV) and Japan, where public broadcaster NHK has picked up the show from Beta Film, which is handling international sales.

The international support shows in the production, which has the look and feel of a high-end cable or network show. In its structure, In Her Car resembles HBO series In Treatment. In each episode, Lydia transports another passenger. They spend time in the car together, exploring their personal trauma. The war is ever-present — the camera pans past stacks of body bags outside a bombed-out apartment building, and Lydia is challenged by Ukrainian soldiers when they see she comes from Luhansk, an Eastern area controlled by Russian separatists — but the focus is on the individual: a woman trying to reconnect with her estranged sister, a grandmother struggling to accept her gay grandson, a father-to-be eager to escape conscription by fleeing the country.

“These emotional stories, the stories of ordinary people are much more effective in making people understand the impact of this war than all our news reporting,” says Simone Emmelius of ZDF.

“Reading the pitch, one of the jurors compared Eugen to Hemingway,” adds Andreas Bareiss of Gaumont. “He has the same talent of sketching precise, powerful stories with a single line or gesture.”

For Manuel Alduy of France Télévisions, it was Tunik’s courage in telling these stories now, without the safe distance of history, that convinced him to come on board. “In France, when we tell stories about a war we went through, we wait 40 years to do it,” he says. “I think it’s incredibly courageous to be telling this story now, in real-time.”

In Her Car was shot on original locations, mostly in Kyiv and the surrounding area. While relatively safe compared to the other regions of Ukraine, “it was still a war zone,” notes Bareiss.

In an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter, In Her Car showrunner Eugen Tunik discussed the real-life inspiration behind the series, the experience of producing in a war zone, and why the show marks a move towards “cultural independence” from Russia.

Can we can start at the beginning? Where did the original idea for In Her Car come from?

It was two weeks into the full-scale Russian invasion. Every Ukrainian at this time felt devastated. Nobody knew what to do. But for me, there was a difference, because after the shock disappeared, I understood that I had to continue my work, but that there was no possibility to continue it in Ukraine. Because all the effort, all the money, was going into weapons and everything else for the war. So I started looking for opportunities outside the Ukrainian TV and film industry. And I understood that the world needed some ideas, some stories, out of Ukraine. The idea for this series came to me in early April 2022. I was driving my car in western Ukraine, where I had relocated with my family. A few weeks before I my sessions with my psychologist, after three years of therapy before the war. But she called me and we started to talk. I was volunteering at the time, transporting people around who needed a car and she gave me advice on how to talk with the people I was carrying, psychological advice, that helped me and my friends to talk with these people. It was from the stories I heard and some of my own experiences, that the idea for this series came about. Then [in the summer of 2022] there was this opportunity to participate in this international pitching session in Berlin. I’d never participated in an international pitching before but they gave me the chance. And the Ukrainian government gave me the permission to leave for Berlin for a few days. [Ukrainian men of fighting age are otherwise forbidden from leaving the country. Ed.] I didn’t win but Gaumont in Germany was interested and that’s where it started.

War is the backdrop to the series, it is set in the first days after the Feb. 24 invasion, but the focus is very much on the passengers’ personal stories.

The setting of the show is the war in Ukraine, but the main point of this show is how the war changes these people’s lives. One of the topics I wanted to raise with the series is how all the problems we had before seemed so small, so insignificant, when the war began. A lot of characters in my show had previous trauma, they had conflict within their families, fights with their friends, with their loved ones. But when the war began, everything changed. Everybody is looking for forgiveness, for an end to the conflicts with the people closest to them.

So, in some way, the horrific, traumatic experience of the war, has been therapeutic for some people, is that also been your personal experience?

Absolutely, yeah. In our show, the psychologist in the car, having therapy-like sessions, helps her passengers realize how unnecessary, how small and stupid their conflicts were in the face of the war. Lydia doesn’t give advice, she only listens and asks questions. But those questions lead them to a final point, a destination for their journey, both physical and psychological. Everybody understands that nothing can be like it was before the war, but our lives are still going on, our personal problems are still there and we need to find the keys to how to deal with the conflicts that were inside us before February 24.

The half-hour episodes are mostly self-contained stories, with the story of Lydia’s own past trauma —her sister was killed in an attack by Russian separatists outside Luhansk in 2014 —developing alongside it.

Every episode is the story of different passenger who Lydia’s taken to her car. And during the ride, they tell her their story. We have one big flashback about that story and the end of the episode is them reaching their destination and some kind of closure, whether good or bad. Then there’s the horizontal plot of Lydia’s story that develops through the entire show until the end.

You had to go outside Ukraine to get the money to make this series. What was it about In Her Car that convinced Western European TV channels that it was a show for them too?

This is a story that is really close to me. It is very local. But the personal conflicts are very similar, and recognizable for anyone who lives in Germany, in France, in Great Britain, in Sweden, or anywhere else. Our investors saw beyond the local element of the story, and saw the big, international potential of this show because everyone could be that passenger in her car. The only thing that distinguishes Ukraine is we have the world’s worst neighbors with Russia.

You began shooting in the middle of the war. What was the experience of making a television series in the middle of a war zone?

It was a strange feeling at the beginning because when you are preparing to the show, you want to be calm, for your team to be calm, to be in control at every moment. But we had air raid alarms, we had some bombings. When the alarm goes, everyone has to run to the shelter and wait it out until it’s over. Also, we had a curfew in Ukraine, so we could only work between 5 pm and 10 pm. But I’m so grateful to Starlight Media and to all our partners who gave us this opportunity because, when the war began, none of us filmmakers in Ukraine believed we would work again. A lot of documentaries were filmed in Ukraine, but nobody believed a feature series or feature film could be done here. So to get this opportunity was incredible.

A lot of stories in this series are about me and my friends, my relatives, they are reflections of what happened to them. So I was willing to go through whatever we had to during the shoot to make this show happen.

Were there any close calls, anything really dangerous during production?

No. Not dangerous for Ukrainian standards. Of course, it can be dangerous, but we had three French actors in one of the episodes, who came to Ukraine and were absolutely fascinated about how everybody was full of energy and so happy to be doing this series. It wasn’t dangerous for the actors or the teams because we followed strict rules. If there was an air alarm during a shoot, we immediately broke off and went to the shelter. We followed curfew. For the interior car scenes, we shot everything safely on a sound stage.

What has been the impact of the war on the Ukrainian TV and film industry? Ukraine was a big and significant producer before the war. What’s the situation now?

On Feb. 24, everything stopped. Filmmaking, TV production, everything. For two months, nobody believed anything could be done. I began translating my previous scripts into English, looking for partners to make something outside the country. Talking to my friends, my colleagues, no one thought they’d be able to work in Ukraine. But step by step, with international support, but also with support inside the industry here, things got moving again. Now there is a lot filming in Ukraine. Serious drama and films. It seems strange, but we survived, we are still going and we’re still doing our best. The TV channels in Ukraine are still working. And alongside the news, they are producing shows and everything else. It seems impossible, but the industry has survived and is growing.

Why do you think it’s important to keep telling these fictional stories in the midst of this war?

Well for two reasons. First, every Ukrainian is a soldier now. Even if I’m not on the frontline, I feel I have to do something for Ukraine. And for people here, when they come back from work, from doing their part, and they turn on the TV, they should have some small break from the news, some entertainment that maybe gives them the strength to get up and fight tomorrow. And it’s culture and TV and films and shows that can lift your spirits and give you a reason to fight.

The second reason is that, before the war, we had a lot of Russian content in Ukrainian TV and on Ukrainian YouTube. And now we have to replace it. Because if we don’t have the capability to produce our own content, we won’t have our own culture. A few weeks ago, I saw a trailer for a Russian film called Bucha. It’s absolutely awful. It’s the Russian propaganda view of what happened in Bucha [where photographic and video evidence has documented the mass murder of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners for war by retreating Russian Armed forces. Ed.]. The film says “it’s all fake, it was all staged by the Ukrainians.” We need to give the world our point of view, to show, for example, what really happened in Bucha. So that’s why we have to produce our Ukrainian stories and to tell the world what’s going on in Ukraine, in the documentary form, feature form, series form, whatever form, to explain how Russia is lying. We can’t wait until they convince the world of their worldview. This show is one small piece in this big, big effort to explain to the world what’s going on in Ukraine, how we are close to every European and every world citizen, and to tell them what Russia is doing here.

It sounds as if you want to gain cultural independence from Russia.

Absolutely. That’s absolutely right. Because 30 years after Ukraine’s independence, we are fighting for it every day. Cultural independence is a big part of this fight because Ukraine has its own beautiful culture, whether painting, music, filmmaking, everything. And the more we can show the world our stories from our cultural point of view, the better Europeans and the world will understand how Ukraine is different, and separate, from Russia.