Mitka, young violinist, plays in a tavern with an older piano player during the German occupation of Ukraine in 1942. In another film, this character would play his music and then the action would focus on a bigger personality. What director, Andreas Kessler, does is drawn us into the emotional turmoil of this young man, and reminds us that every person is affected by war and violence. At this young age, Mitka is carrying out instructions from a Ukrainian partisan movement to execute some of the German officers the frequent the tavern. Nakam is shortlisted for this year’s Live Action Short Film Oscar, and it’s thrillingly directed while echoing the loss of innocence.
It took Kessler many years to get Nakam off the ground, but after he read about this true story, he couldn’t shake it. You immediately get a sense of how much Mitka’s story means to him.
“When I first read about the story, I immediately thought I wanted to make a film about it,” Kessler said. “I didn’t know the scale of it at the time, but it touched me and I couldn’t let it go. Year after year after film school. it kept coming back to me, but I knew that I wanted to tell it in an authentic way. The writing was composed out of several processes. At the premier in Cleveland, and I had friends who attended who are Jewish. We showed a good amount of people to make sure that it was as authentic as it possibly could be–the whole process took about six or eight years.”
As Mitka, Anton Krymskiy makes a stunning debut. This character has lost his entire family, and he cannot get too close with Yegor in order to keep him away from danger. You can see the youthful uncertainty in his face that we all experience at that age, but Mitka must contend with much darker forces on a daily basis.
“I got to know Anton on a set where he played a role on a set that I was working on, and on the breaks, I saw him speaking in his native langue,” he said. “He could take direction very well, and he can translate that into his facial emotions. It was very suited to what he was supposed to do in this film. When I asked him to come to the casting, I realized how he was committed to learning many things for the part like taking 2 years to learn how to play the violin. He has never touched one before, and he knew that he needed to practice. I play the violin myself, so I would know if he wasn’t practicing. Anton interpreted the character in a very mature way. Adults wouldn’t know what to do if they were in his position.”
Even though Mitka goes over the plan time and time again in his mind, carrying out an explosion in the tavern feels different when the steps are put into motion. In one of the film’s most nerve-wracking sequences, Yegor leaves the tavern, and Mitka lights the explosives. Mitka believes that his friend is safe, but then we hear the plinking of the piano keys. Can this 12 year old boy sacrifice his friendship in order to carry out his deed?
“That was the intention of making those moments count,” Kessler said. “I spent a lot of time with Fabien [Virayie], our screenwriter to figure out if we were going to see Yegor in that moment, but we decided to hear him instead. We decided to tell the story in a way where Mitka believes that everything is going well. He will be able to save the ones he loves and get justice. He starts the fire and then he hears the piano. It all goes wrong. The tragedy that touched me the most was about a young boy who tries to do the right thing in a world where nothing is good anymore. “For my family” is a kind of apology but then he has to go right away. It’s a horrible moment.”
The SS Officer doles our cruelty in a casual manner. When he talks with Mitka, we never know if the questions he asks are our of mere curiosity or if he is onto Mitka’s plans. In one tense scene, he asks Mitka to see his violin case when we know that Mitka has hidden explosives inside.
“With Peter Miklusz, who plays the officer, he was very interested in telling the story, and he learned Russian for those exchanges,” Kessler said. “He was able to convey this ambivalence between interested and a little impressed by this boy if he finds out that Mitka is Jewish. He is, thought, a character that would stick to his ideologies and be brutal and maybe even kill him. We wanted to show how, in a different world, he could connect with this boy, but only in a certain moment in a certain time. We start the scene with a shocked moment where Mitka sees the hanged partisan, and then instead of starting with the tension with the case, he starts connecting with him. The scene ends with Mitka right in front of the door that he needs to go into and the officer saying. ‘Oh, by the way, my niece plays the violin.’ It was important to not be able to guess what he really wanted.”
In the last few years, we have seen an unfortunate rise in anti-Semitism across the world, and that makes Nakam‘s presence even more vital. Mitka being a Ukrainian Jew and Nakam being set in Ukraine as the world watches the current Russian invasion is a surreal experience. That is not lost on Kessler, and he wants to tell a heroic story while reminding us that there are no winners in wartime.
“Other than it being a heroic story of this boy and of the Jewish partisan movement, I didn’t want to make any movie about winners of war,” he said. “It’s a great success for the partisans, but we know now that World War II was such a horrible time. I don’t know a good thing that came out of this. That’s why I wanted to tell a personal story. War creates more violence, more death, more suffering. Unfortunately, this is a downward spiral, and it created a lot of horrible conflict . You can see those parallels, because now there is another occupation with partisan movements rising again. It was shocking to us when we finished the film and then this war started, and it was shocking to think that words from this period–that we thought were old words–are back in the media. The goal is to not only create a lot of empathy for this young, Jewish boy, but we wanted to say that there were no winners in war.”
As the film draws to a close, Mitka opens his violin case and he stares at the instrument. Kessler keeps the camera on Krymskiy’s face, and we see that loss of innocence. Nothing will be the same again just as he felt when he lost his entire family. It’s a complicated moment handled with sensitivity and sophistication. More work–and difficult loss–might be ahead of this young man, but he has to keep putting one foot in front of the other in order to survive.
“That was a very important moment,” Kessler said, contemplatively. “It’s composed, in a visual sense, where there are a lot of people, and they are happy because the plan went well. He’s finally among a lot of people, and he’s not alone. In one shot, we keep walking forward, but everyone is walking faster. The Ukrainian partisan comes up and talks to Mitka about what is justice. What does justice mean in an adult sense? He suddenly realizes that the world is a lot more brutal. In the end, he stands there all alone as he looks at his violin. And then he starts to walk again.
The work with Anton was interesting in that moment. I started to let him play the scene by himself to let him find his own rhythm. At that moment, he would always start the whole take, and I made over 20 people to wait for him. When he played that moment, it was interesting, because I told him very little. Maybe he’s thinking of his friends or of the future. We did a few takes where he took it in a very emotional direction, and I was very impressed with his instincts again. You can tell that he knows a lot about acting and connecting to the moment.”
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