‘Our House Is On Fire’ Director and Producers Talk Shooting In Ukraine

Our House Is On Fire, described by IMDb as “A love story set in Kyiv, against the dramatic backdrop of the beginning of the war in Ukraine,” is a film that was filmed within the feature’s country through the solid state that the story lives within. Alice Biletska, the director of the film, and Brian Perkins, Daniel Finkelman, and Oleg Saitskiy, producers of the film, spoke at the Cannes Film Festival about their experiences filming in Ukraine during the war-stricken time. 

Deadline caught Biletska’s conversation on Saturday. She stated, “It was pretty intense. But to be honest, it was more intense on the outside. The moment you go there, and you start interviewing people in the bomb shelters and in the subways, you realize, ‘Oh, this is totally possible.’ Not only is it possible but it needs to be done right now because every crew member, every extra, every actor – everyone understands the importance of this being told right now in Ukraine.”

Biletska is the first student to graduate from the American Film Institute’s directing program that’s from Ukraine. Deadline says the script is co-written between Biletska, Perkins, and Marysia Nikitiuk. The story is a personal one for Biletska, who spent years back and forth between Ukraine and the US. Perkins had said to Biletska, “I feel like we both need to go – maybe for different reasons. But I think we need to be there.”

Finkelman also mentioned, “It’s very personal for me. When the war broke out, we were actually doing a reshoot in Slovakia, and I told some of the local producers there that we were working with that we actually wanted some Ukrainian refugees to come and join the film… When Brian [Perkins] told me about the film, I just said, without question, ‘I’m in.’”