In Franz Böhm’s Rock Paper Scissors, Ivan (Oleksandr Rudynskyi) is working in a makeshift hospital with his father in Ukraine and must make a difficult decision when he learns that Russian soldiers are quickly advancing on their position.
Awards Buzz spoke with Böhm and producer Hayder Hoozeer about whether they wanted to make sure this was a film recognizable as taking place in Ukraine or if its indiscernible location could represent anywhere in the world. Böhm shared:
“I think it’s a very universal story, and I think the execution of this particular project, the execution of this particular story, was very much defined by wanting to stay as authentic as possible, when it comes to dialogue, certainly. By the way, huge, huge thank you to the amazing Ukrainian community who helped us so much in being able to achieve that authenticity. We had a lot of Ukrainian members on set. Obviously, we had an all-Ukrainian cast, and was a huge, huge pleasure work with them, and it was very, very inspiring to see how much they were bringing into this project as well. Obviously, we had to get some of them out of Ukraine. Some of them were traveling from other European countries. Just seeing how invested they were and how much of their creative spirit they were lending, and how much of their experience and talent they were lending to the project was very inspiring, I think, not only for me, I think for the entire, for the entire team.”
Hoozeer added that this story really is deliberate in its specificity:
“I think what gives this film its strength is that it is distinctively a film about the conflict in Ukraine. That is fact. The person who it’s based on, the real story that it’s based on, the actors, what they’ve had to go through bring them over to be able to shoot this, because we’re pulling them out of an active conflict zone to be able to come and shoot the film, even the different elements of the storytelling, is distinctively Ukrainian. We worked with, like Franz said, a Ukrainian community to ensure that we could bring through the authenticity of the storytelling so that people don’t get pulled out of the storytelling, because we really wanted to focus on the realities of the civilian perspective.”
Watch the video above to hear how audiences have responded to the film and how the filmmakers settled on its title.
Rock, Paper, Scissors is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Live Action Short.
