When the idea for Yogis of Ukraine took shape, I realized something:
💡 I had never seen a war film told from the perspective of women.
💡 I had never seen a film about yoga during war.
I knew this film had to be different.
I wasn’t just making a documentary about war. I was capturing resilience, healing, and light in the face of unimaginable destruction.
Influences & Inspirations: Shaping the Story
As I began directing, I drew inspiration from two films that shaped my view of war storytelling:
🎥 Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (1956) – A harrowing documentary about Nazi concentration camps, blending brutal history with poetic reflection.
🎥 Humphrey Jennings' Listen to Britain (1942) – A documentary that captures life in London under Nazi bombing, focusing on everyday resilience rather than just destruction.
I wanted Yogis of Ukraine to carry the same emotional weight—not just documenting war, but showing how people endure, heal, and find meaning beyond trauma.
The Language Challenge: Balancing Subtitles & Storytelling
One of my biggest challenges was language.
📌 For a Western audience, constant subtitles can be tiring.
📌 So, I asked women who spoke English to do parts of their interviews in English.
🚀 It worked… partly.
But in Ukraine, English is a third language after Ukrainian and Russian.
💡 While English helped communicate some of their stories, the nuances—the poetry of their emotions—were lost outside their native tongue.
In the end, I realized their words needed to remain in their own language—even if that meant trusting subtitles to carry their depth and power.
Telling a Story of War Through Women’s Eyes: A Message Bigger Than Ukraine
As I got to know these women, they told me something unexpected:
💬 “This film isn’t just about Ukraine. It’s for the whole planet.”
At this point, I hadn’t even reviewed the actual interviews—I only knew the broad topics we had discussed.
But something deeper was happening.
🚀 This wasn’t just a war documentary. It was a story of spiritual resilience.
I realized the film had to work on three levels:
1️⃣ A document of war and survival in Ukraine.
2️⃣ A record of truth—of what these women wanted to share with the world.
3️⃣ A universal message of healing, light, and peace.
💡 The more I filmed, the more I saw that these women were living examples of what the world needs: courage, joy, and unwavering faith in love over fear.
Holding Space for Love in a War Zone
The yoga teacher training became a powerful lens for the film—not because it was about becoming yoga teachers, but because:
📌 It gave structure to the women’s journey.
📌 It showed how they held space for love and joy amid war.
📌 It wasn’t about yoga techniques—it was about the transformation happening within them.
This wasn’t a place filled with hatred or anger—it was filled with light, joy, and resilience.
And my job?
🎥 To capture that light and communicate it to the world.
💡 What if more people lived like these modern Ukrainian yogis? Wouldn’t the world be a better place?
Protecting the Footage: A Filmmaker’s Duty
I knew that what I was capturing was pure gold. I was telling a Story of War Through Women’s Eyes and that was very rare.
Ukraine was an active war zone—anything could happen. So I took extra precautions:
📌 Multiple copies of all footage, stored in different places.
📌 Hard drives hidden in separate locations in case of destruction.
📌 Backups constantly created and sent out of the country.
Because in war, nothing is guaranteed.
🚀 If anything happened to me, I needed to make sure the story survived.
Final Thoughts: A Film for the World
Yogis of Ukraine started as a documentary about women using yoga to heal from war.
But it became something much bigger.
💡 It became a story about resilience in the face of destruction.
💡 A message of love in a time of suffering.
💡 A call for healing—not just in Ukraine, but everywhere.
As I shaped the film, I realized:
✔ This is not just Ukraine’s story—it is humanity’s story.
✔ It is about how we face pain, loss, and fear.
✔ And ultimately, how we choose light over darkness.
💬 “Wouldn’t the world be a better place if more people lived like these modern Ukrainian yogis?”