In this episode of Stream Close Up, Brian speaks with Ukrainian filmmaker Roman Liubyi about his latest film, Time Machine Maidan.

Roman is part of the filmmaking collective Babylon’13, which came together during the first days of the Maidan Revolution in 2013. What began as an urgent effort to film, subtitle, and share short videos from inside the protest movement has grown into a larger cinematic archive of modern Ukrainian history.

Time Machine Maidan draws on that archive in a strikingly original way. The film imagines a young soldier from today’s battlefield traveling back ten years to the beginning of the Revolution of Dignity. Using archival footage, voiceover, and experimental visual transitions, Roman and his collaborators turn documentary material into something closer to a time travel story, a memory piece, and a work of political cinema all at once.

The conversation explores how the film was shaped by the tenth anniversary of Maidan, the desire to create something Roman could one day show his daughter, and the challenge of making a film about history while that history is still violently unfolding. Roman discusses the role of Babylon’13, the artistic tension behind the film’s structure, the use of new visual technology on decade-old footage, and why he sees Maidan and the current war as part of the same struggle.

They also talk about the personal side of revolution: love stories born during moments of upheaval, the strange sense of community that existed on Maidan, and the responsibility Ukrainian filmmakers feel as they continue to create while living through war.

A powerful conversation about memory, resistance, collective authorship, and the role cinema can play when the present is still fighting with the past.

Trailer: Time Machine Maidan

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