UNKNOWN HORIZONS: SLAVA UKRANI (2024)

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT – UNKNOWN HORIZONS: SLAVA UKRAINI

This film began as something simple: a holiday abroad, a personal step out of my comfort zone. But it became something else entirely. Unknown Horizons: Slava Ukraini is more than a documentary—it's a truth-telling journey into the heart of a war-torn land, and a confrontation with my own assumptions about conflict, courage, and compassion.

I'm not a war correspondent. I'm not a politician. I'm just a disabled filmmaker with Tourette Syndrome from the UK who picked up a camera and found himself in a moment that demanded more than observation. It demanded action. Through this film, I wanted to show what I saw—not through a polished lens, but through raw, honest experience.

What struck me most wasn't the devastation, though it was everywhere. It was the people. The ones doing real work. The ones the world doesn’t see. Aubrey, Andy, Denyns—these aren’t household names, but they’re heroes in every sense of the word. They risk their lives not for glory, but because they know it’s right.

This documentary does not attempt to explain the entirety of the war in Ukraine. Instead, it focuses on lived moments—small truths that speak volumes. The Red Cross controversies, the impassable borders, the human cost behind every checkpoint—these are pieces of a much larger story, but they are pieces I lived, and I carry them with me.

Every frame in this film comes from a place of love. Love for the people I met, for the ones who stood up, and for the idea that humanity can still choose to be better. I hope this film doesn’t just inform. I hope it moves you. I hope it makes you question what you think you know.

Most of all, I hope it reminds us that in times of great darkness, it’s ordinary people who become the light.

— Spyke O’Hanlin