Review – Rock Paper Scissors
Martin Duffy
Rock Paper Scissors
Directed by Franz Böhm, 2024
The Ukraine conflict is Europe’s largest since the Second World War. One could argue that the modern roots lie in the 2013 Euromaidan protests which encouraged counter-reaction in Moscow’s occupation of Crimea and backing of pro-Russian separatists in Donbas. However, this conflict is much older, and also reflects Putin’s refusal to accept the geo-political status quo of Ukraine with its increasingly Brussels-leaning orientation. The global consequences of this territorial war are as significant as the human displacement and humanitarian crisis which it has generated. Rock Paper Scissors, a film-short on the Ukrainian war, is a sensitive but (still) gruesome example of the truism that a picture paints a thousand words. Inspired by a true story, the film shows Ivan and his doctor father operating a makeshift hospital on the front lines of the Ukrainian war. They save thousands of lives among Ukrainian reservists and local people hunkering down against Russian missiles. Then Russian combatants breach their lines, leaving Ivan with an impossible choice: either to flee or to stay and protect his father, patients, and fellow Ukrainians.
Rock Paper Scissors was co-written by director Franz Böhm and a Ukrainian teenager 'Ivan', whom Böhm met by chance after Ivan fled to Britain. Ivan (whose full name has not been shared) will never know about the film’s BAFTA win or its nomination in the Action film category for the 2026 Oscars. At just 18, he was killed in battle after returning to Ukraine in January 2024 to fight for his country. Bohm says Ivan leaves behind a powerful legacy:
Our whole team think about him a lot. It was his story and his experience, but also his commitment to the film, his readiness to tell the story with us, that is at least now a small part of this very important public debate about Putin’s war with Ukraine…Rock Paper Scissors has already picked up a weighty accolade from inside Ukraine.
With the war still raging, the film had to be shot in the UK, mostly in North Wales. But getting its Ukrainian cast in place, including Oleksander Rudynksi, who plays Ivan and is one of the country's leading actors, was problematical and was obtained only with Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s backing. Producer Hayder Rothschild Hoozer states:
This (formally) says they recognise Ivan’s sacrifice and his life…. So this was huge for us, as non-Ukrainians. To have the support not just of the Ukrainian community but also the Office of the President, really helps with what we are trying to achieve with the film - to help build empathy for the civilians of the conflict in Ukraine”
The plot is predictably stark as Hoozer elaborates:
Ivan, a young man living in eastern Ukraine…with his father, a surgeon in a frontline hospital… two Russian soldiers are approaching their bunker… Ivan sees that there are eight, not two, Russian soldiers. Understanding that he cannot neutralize them all, he shoots himself in the leg in order to pose as a pro-Russian local resident and divert the Russians. However, the Russians are already aware of the hospital's location, and Russian bombers destroy the building…after the destruction of the hospital, and the death of his father, Ivan joined the military and was killed in combat in 2023.
Böhm creates an immersive atmosphere that acts like a visual and auditory stranglehold on his audience. There are various filmmaking ploys used to unsettle the viewers, from the emotional plea from one of the hospital’s children to Ivan to play another round of the board-game, "Rock, Paper, Scissors", to the stark colour-contrast of Ivan’s orange sniper rifle against the grey rock of the mountainside. A child's voice is heard in the darkness of the basement, asking "Yu-ze-fa": calling desperately for Ivan. The use of the sniper’s rifle-scope as a frame for viewers to witness the approaching soldiers, is ingenious. The bunker feels warm if claustrophobic, heightening the sense of the peril those inside face, whilst Ivan’s contrasting venture outside feels stark, cold, and lifeless. It is a short film honed to perfection. As Hoozer explains, he wanted to pitch the Ukrainian imbroglio in the wider context of global dysfunction:
Whilst it's very authentically Ukrainian, we wanted this to be able to sit within any kind of conflict… the idea is that this is what it looks like for a civilian or for someone on the ground. We didn't want to make the character into this Hollywood hero that saves the day. It's not good versus evil, or anything like that. We really wanted to show how this feels when it's happening around you. I have a personal connection to Ukraine. One of my best friends is Ukrainian, and she was displaced in 2014 from Donetsk when they seized that city. And then again, with this more recent invasion, I spent quite a lot of time in Ukraine as well, so it hit hard for me in that aspect. But… I think that at the core, it's a story of the quiet bravery that people face in adversity. And I think that even from my own life story, my own background…. it's something that I really want to support and push with these types of storytelling. It's something I'm very passionate about.”
When public emotionality is most sensitive and external political realities are so pressing, the result can be disastrous. To serve the memory of someone like Ivan through this short film is a noble pursuit, and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that this film is worthy of this young man’s sacrifice. Audiences will undoubtedly engage with the story and be left moved by his deeds, especially at such a young age. In 20 minutes, the director manages to create a tense atmosphere and a feeling that a third of an hour is not enough for this story. Its scope is expansive, and it appears wide-ranging. This effect is created by Hsien Yu Niu's deft, slow-paced cinematography. Each frame of the film carries a poignancy as we get up-close to the daily dilemmas of humanitarian workers facing Russian invasion. The expressions on the actor’s faces seem as real as the previously unseen footage from the on-going war in Ukraine. Frame after frame captures war atrocities and violations of human rights. There is a total lack of respect for humanitarian law from both sides. It is a miserable, medieval, activist war.
Bitter winter weather and muddy trench-like battle-scape add to the bleak atmosphere. Elsewhere we see dynamic bursts, and tension turned up to the maximum. This is complemented by effective cinematographic double-exposure techniques: the viewer sees the arriving Russians through the optics of binoculars or a sniper-scope, as the character Oleksandr Rudynskyy is looking. When Rudynskyi, who played Ivan, received the award, he said he was dedicating it to Ivan and to Yevhen Svitlychnyi, a 29-year-old Ukrainian actor and a soldier who died on the Kharkiv front line on July 19, 2023.
Joining 20 Days in Mariupol (which also won a BAFTA), Rock Paper Scissors is but the latest award-winning Ukrainian film. When one considers the modest size and sparse resources of the Ukrainian film industry, this is a remarkable achievement.
Martin Duffy has participated in more than two hundred international election and human rights assignments since beginning his career in Africa and Asia in the 1980s. He has served with a wide range of international organizations and has frequently been decorated for field service, among them UN (United Nations) Peacekeeping Citations and the Badge of Honour of the International Red Cross Movement. He has also held several academic positions in Ireland, UK, USA and elsewhere. He is a proponent of experiential learning and holds awards from Dublin, Oxford, Harvard, and several other institutions including the Diploma in International Relations at the University of Cambridge.