The filmmaker testifies on BFMTV to tell the situation in Ukraine, where he is committed to helping civilians and fighting the Russian invasion.
Screenwriter, director, producer… and fighter. Olias Barco, a French filmmaker living in kyiv for eight years, joined a Ukrainian paramilitary group to resist the Russian invasion. At the same time, he directed the shocking short film Paris under the bombs, which imagines the French capital bombarded, to raise awareness. The video, widely shared on social networks, has been viewed 2.3 million times to date.
Passing through Paris, Olias Barco spoke to BFMTV about his commitment to Ukrainians.
“I decided to join my friends from the cinema who are going to war,” explains the man who is married to a Ukrainian. “These are people I’ve worked with for eight years, young people between the ages of 25 and 45.”
“We miss everything”
Accustomed to frequenting shooting ranges for years, Olias Barco knows how to handle weapons. On the spot, he can “as well be on the front, in the trenches” as responsible “to recover food”: “In kyiv, we lack everything: helmets, bulletproof vests, medicines, first aid … it’s a carnage, we find ourselves with a terrible lack of means”, he explains. This is also the purpose of his visit to Paris: “I go back and forth with a car full of drugs.”
For him, the Ukrainians “have ample means” to repel the army of Vladimir Putin, “because they are force-fed with weapons by the United States and Western countries”. Nevertheless, he underlines “a real concern, which is in the sky”: “We find ourselves under the bombs and it’s a disaster. It affects civilians, it affects absolutely everyone, and it spares no one.”