Why this is published
This film depicts the aftermath of conflict-related sexual violence and the loss of a pregnancy. Those are not incidental elements; they are the events the story turns on. A production handling that material owes its cast and crew a set of protocols agreed in advance, and it owes prospective collaborators the chance to read them before deciding whether to work here.
So they are published. Anyone considering joining this production can read exactly what has been committed to, and hold us to it.
What is on screen, and what is not
The assault is not depicted. There is no scene of it, no partial depiction, no sound of it over another image, and no flashback to it later. The film cuts from a door to a morning, and everything that matters about what happened is carried by what follows.
This is not squeamishness and it is not a rating decision. Depicting the act would make the audience a witness to a spectacle, and the entire film is constructed to prevent exactly that positioning. It is also, practically, what allows us to make this film without asking a performer to enact an assault.
The miscarriage is likewise off screen — it happens in a corridor, with the camera in an adjacent room, while a neighbour knocks at a door.
The protocols, in full
An intimacy coordinator is engaged for every scene involving physical contact, undress, or the emotional aftermath of assault — including scenes with no nudity and no contact. Their involvement begins at script stage, not on the shoot day.
Closed set for the identified scenes: performer, director, DoP, one camera assistant, intimacy coordinator, one sound operator. No monitors outside the room. No stills photography. No visitors, no exceptions, including for financiers.
Choreography is agreed and documented in advance, in writing, and does not change on the day. If the director wants something different once shooting starts, it stops, and it is discussed and re-agreed before another take.
Anyone can stop a take. Not just performers — anyone on set, without explanation, at any time. The word is spoken aloud and everything stops. Nobody is asked afterwards why they used it.
Scenes are scheduled with room around them. Never last on a call sheet, never immediately before wrap, never on the same day as another identified scene.
Independent psychological support is available to cast and crew throughout production and for three months after, paid by the production, arranged so that no one has to ask a producer for access.
The rule behind the rules
None of this is a favour extended to a performer. All of it is a condition of the production existing. A film about the violation of consent that treats consent on its own set as negotiable is not worth making.
Consultation, and its limits
The script was developed with consultation from displaced Ukrainian women living in Germany, arranged through community organisations, and reviewed by a psychologist working with displaced people.
Three principles governed that process. Nobody was asked to recount a traumatic experience. Everyone was paid for their time. And nobody’s participation is used as an endorsement — a consultation is not a certificate, and we do not cite it to deflect criticism.
The limits matter too. We spoke to a small number of people. They do not represent anyone. Where their input contradicted a dramatic instinct, we mostly followed the input — but not always, and the places where we did not are our responsibility rather than theirs.
Handling the child performer
The boy’s role is almost entirely vocal, and the vision sequence is short. The performer works with a chaperone present at all times and to strictly limited hours, which is standard. Two things are not standard.
He has not read the script and will not. He receives his own scenes only, in a context explained to him and to his guardian, with no information about the events surrounding them. The subject matter of this film is not appropriate for a child performer to be carrying, and there is no craft justification for it.
His scenes are shot in isolation from the rest of the material — a separate block, a separate space, on days when nothing else in the film is being made.
Care for the crew, not only the cast
Crew care is where productions with good intentions most often stop short. The camera assistant watching a scene through a monitor for eleven takes is exposed to it eleven times, and typically nobody has thought about that at all.
Our provisions: everyone is briefed on the content of the day before the day, not on the morning of it. Anyone may withdraw from a scene without giving a reason and without any effect on their engagement. The support arrangements cover crew on the same terms as cast. And there is a scheduled decompression at the end of any day containing identified material — ten minutes, whole unit, no notes and no production business.
How the protocols were written
They were not drafted by a producer alone, which is the failure mode we most wanted to avoid. The process had four stages.
A first draft from published practice. Existing industry guidance on intimacy coordination and on filming with vulnerable participants, adapted to the scale of this production.
Review by an intimacy coordinator. This produced the most important structural change. Our original wording made stopping a take something a performer requested. Her point was blunt: if the person with the least power in the room has to ask, the mechanism does not work. It became a right belonging to everyone, exercised without explanation.
Review by a psychologist. Focused on the aftercare provisions and on the scheduling. She added the requirement that identified scenes are never last on a call sheet — an exhausted unit at the end of a day has no capacity left for care.
Circulation to the crew before contracting. Anyone joining reads this before they sign, and two people have asked for changes. One was adopted.
What the intimacy coordinator actually does
There is a persistent misunderstanding — including inside the industry — that an intimacy coordinator is a compliance officer who slows down a shoot. On this production the role is closer to a choreographer with a safeguarding brief.
At script stage they read for what is actually being asked of a performer, which is frequently different from what the writer thinks is on the page.
In pre-production they establish each performer’s boundaries privately, before anyone is in a room together, and translate them into a documented choreography.
On the day they run the scene’s physical staging the way a stunt coordinator runs a fall — rehearsed, agreed, repeatable, and identical from take to take.
After they close the scene out deliberately, so that it ends rather than dissolving into the next setup.
The effect on the schedule has been the opposite of the expectation. Scenes with documented choreography are faster, because nobody is negotiating in front of a unit.
Depiction without exploitation: the specific choices
Beyond the decision not to depict the assault, four smaller choices carry most of the weight, and they are the sort of thing that is invisible unless named.
No damage as design. Bruising, torn clothing and dishevelment are not used as visual shorthand. The morning after is shot with the same restraint as the morning before, and the difference the audience registers is entirely in performance.
The camera does not linger. There is no shot in the film that holds on a body for longer than the scene requires. This is a shot-list decision, made in advance, and it removes the possibility of finding a beautiful frame in the edit that we should not use.
She is never only a victim. Margarita is funny in four scenes, impatient in two, and competent throughout. A character defined entirely by what was done to her is a device.
No redemptive ending. The film does not resolve her experience into meaning. Offering the audience a consolation would be a kindness extended to them at her expense.
Aftercare, and the part productions forget
Support that ends at wrap is not support. The provisions on this production run for three months after the last shooting day, and that period is costed into the budget rather than hoped for.
The access route matters as much as the provision. Nobody has to ask a producer, because asking a producer means disclosing something to the person who decides whether you work again. Contact details go to everyone at the start, the arrangement is with an independent practitioner, and the production is told only that the service was used, never by whom.
Post-production is the stage most often overlooked entirely. An editor works with this material for months, alone, at a level of repetition nobody on set experiences. Our editor is covered by the same provisions and has a scheduled limit on hours spent on identified sequences in a single day.
If you are working on something similar
Four things, offered without any claim to authority.
Write it down before you need it. A protocol invented on a difficult day is a negotiation, not a protocol.
Give the power to stop to everyone, unconditionally. Any version that requires a reason places the burden on the person least able to carry it.
Pay your consultants. Unpaid consultation is extraction, and it selects for the people who can afford to give their time.
Publish it. Not for credit — so that people can decide whether to work with you, and so that when you get it wrong someone can point at the specific sentence.
What we do not claim
We do not claim these protocols make the material safe to work with. They do not. They make it possible to work with responsibly, which is a different and much smaller claim.
We also do not claim to have got this right. This document is a version, and it has already been revised twice — once after the psychologist’s review, once after a conversation with an intimacy coordinator who pointed out that our original wording put the burden of stopping on the person least able to carry it.
If you work in this area and something here is wrong, we would like to hear it. The address is on the contact page, and a correction to this document is a better outcome for us than a compliment about it.