A young Ukrainian girl waits for a call from her father in the powerful 2D-animated short Sunflower Field, directed by Polina Buchak (Pool Party) and animated by Mulan Fu (Stray Cat Ah Q). The timely project, which won the Oscar-qualifying Best Short Animation prize at the 2023 Woodstock Film Festival, explores the terrible mental impact of war on young children. Buchak and Fu were kind enough to answer a few of our questions in an email interview. Here is what they told us:
Animation Magazine: Congrats on the recent success of your short. Can you tell us a bit about how this project came to be?
Polina Buchak: This was my first time working with animation in a narrative way. During the pandemic I co-directed animated explainer-type of videos for NYC Department of Education, and that was when I started collaborating with Mulan professionally. When I came to her with the idea for Sunflower Field and presented my first draft of storyboards, she very gracefully complimented me on my mediocre drawings and we tossed probably 70% of what I initially envisioned would be part of the animation. I learned a lot about the magic and the lack of rules (which I’m used to from live-action projects) when it comes to animation from this production. A lot of Mulan’s work deals with mysticism and dreamscapes, which is why she was my perfect collaborator for this story. Together we really tried to place ourselves in the shoes of a child and see the world through their eyes.
Mulan Fu: Polina and I were classmates at NYU Film. I concentrated my study on animation production while she focused on live action — our collaboration started as early as our school days. Professionally, I’ve worked as a freelance independent 2D animator and also in the creative development space in the animated feature and game industry. For Sunflower Field, I brought the animation perspective and production experiences to adapt Polina’s vision into an animated format.
When did you decide to make the short and how long did it take?
Polina: The decision to make Sunflower Field came the moment I woke up from a nightmare when I was back home in Kyiv: It was January 2022 then. At that time, my family was still talking about a hypothetical war and I simply couldn’t grasp what they were saying. War wasn’t new to us, because Ukrainians have been defending our freedom since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and illegal occupation of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in 2014. What changed was the scale of the planned invasion, and that steeped fear that I haven’t felt before. I was terrified of what war would do to our children and tried to understand how we even explain that to them. In my nightmare, I saw the scene where an embroidered house was getting torn apart, so I immediately knew that my subconsciousness was speaking and I had to do something about it. That’s when I wrote the first draft.
After February 24th, the script that was supposed to be a “what if” scenario had to be changed to “what’s happening now” from a kid’s perspective. While building out the story, what was always important for me was to make sure that we show that children do have the agency and ability to connect with complexities of the world. Our team was trying to speed through production because of the urgency of the story, so it took us about eight months to reach the final export. We had an amazing World Premiere at Cleveland International Film Festival and at every screening I urge the audiences to do our part in protecting children from atrocities that war brings.
Can you tell us about the nuts and bolts of the animation?
Mulan: I animated in Photoshop and composited in After Effects. The storytelling required various types of textures and textile brushes, so I chose Photoshop over other more commonly used animation tools to utilize its versatile brush preset capabilities and blending modes.
Polina: We spoke at length about the different animation styles in each scene to convey the progression of a nightmare and how our character drifts in her dreamscapes. We start with colors that are more welcoming and have smoother brush strokes, which show the girl’s reality. As soon as she transitions into a dream, the shapes get sharper, the coloring of objects is more abrupt and we even added googly eyes to them. Mulan loves playing with anthropomorphism in her work. It made sense for us to do that because the objects in the backpack are meant to be the emergency things that people were advised to pack in case of a need to evacuate — except now they look like scary monsters to a child.
What were some of your biggest challenges along the way?
Polina: One of the challenges was figuring out how to accomplish the necessary embroidery scene. Stylistically, it was a crucial part of the story, because it was important for me to represent Ukraine visually — as well as audibly — when the animation is screened without my presence. Mulan and I looked through several samples of embroidered art pieces and traditional Ukrainian houses. We also had to study the motion of stitching for the close-up shot of our character. Customizing brushes in Photoshop helped us achieve the texture on each cross-stitched string in the scene.
The other challenge was the fact that we were an ocean apart — she was animating from Shanghai at the time, and I was assembling each scene she would send me in Premiere in New York. At the same time, our sound designer Serhii Avdieiev was audibly transforming the animation in the studio in Kyiv under air sirens and electricity outages. We faced several delays in the process, but that comes with the territory when you’re making art during wartime. I’m eternally grateful for his work.
What are you proudest of?
Polina: Beyond getting this animation made in the tight timeline we had, I am really proud of the impact this animation has had. I didn’t understand its power until I screened it for children in Ukrainian schools (age ranging from four- to 16-year olds) around the U.S. In Ohio, teachers came up to me to express the fact that this animation helps them understand the mental state that their kids are in. In California, I did a drawing session with a class of predominantly newly-arrived Ukrainians (those who fled the full-scale invasion two years ago). I took the first shot of the animation that introduces the town our character lives in, removed the coloring, and asked the kids to draw their own cities. That was the only prompt. The drawings I received spoke louder than words could ever. A nine-year-old boy couldn’t remember the color of his roof while a four-year-old girl immediately colored all five houses with a black pencil. When I asked her if she wanted to add colors, she took an orange marker and drew spikes on top of a roof — signifying flames. After collecting a few more pieces from other schools, the plan is to recreate the introduction to the animation with those children’s drawings. That’s how we can help tell the story of their inner world.
Mulan: I’m tremendously proud of the fact that we managed to produce this short over the span of a few months with a 12-hour time difference between us. We were in two different parts of the world, confronting drastically different and impactful sociopolitical changes in our communities, while maintaining the creative energy and effort to chip away at the production of this short. The completion of this short alone is a testament to our creative tenacity that I’m proud of for both of us.
What are you working on next?
Polina: I’m focused on getting Sunflower Field to the finish line of our festival journey and finding a home for it online that is accessible for everyone. And, at the same time, continue using it as an advocacy tool to keep the conversation around helping children that faced war alive — our war is not over. I’m also in pre-production for a few other projects, one of which turns the camera lens on my family to tell the story of how my grandparents ended up in Nigeria. More to come!
Mulan: I’m working on the next personal animated short film, currently titled Just One Peek. Sunflower Field also ignited the excitement of collaborating with trusty creative partners, and I hope to participate in a project like this again in the future.
How is your family faring in Ukraine?
Polina: I am happy to report that my family members that are in Ukraine are safe. Our family comes from Chernihiv, which is about 50 miles from the Russian border. Our city defended Kyiv during Russia’s attempt to reach the capital from the north, and that left prominent scars of destruction. That was the reason why some of our members were forced to flee — some went to Europe, my grandparents joined my parents in Nigeria. Life goes on and we are rebuilding ourselves now even during active war, and so some of my family returned back home. I’m in constant contact with them and waiting for all of us to be able to sit at the dinner table together again. They are forever my source of strength and inspiration — the reason why I can’t stop advocating for Ukraine.
What are your thoughts on the state of the world and its reaction to the terrible tragedies in Ukraine?
Polina: Alas, if we as a humankind are still hoping for a better future, we no longer have the luxury of closing our eyes to the affairs of others. Everything is interconnected, so if you’re convinced that someone’s war is not your problem, I suggest you think again. Over the 10 years of our war, the world seemed to be awake two times when our events were headline-worthy. While we are grateful for the help that we have received, the decisions are being made with incredible delay that we pay with the lives of our people. Russia’s full-scale invasion on Ukraine should have sent a loud message to the whole world that the international laws and institutions that are in place to oversee everyone’s safety and peace need a serious restart. At the end of the day, Ukraine is not only defending its independence and territorial integrity, but also defending the rest of the world.
Do you think creating art can help heal the soul and help bring beauty into a world torn by war and cruelty?
Polina: Over the years, I’ve realized that I react to the affairs of the world through art. In 2014, I made my very first attempt at a documentary trying to explain to the world the timeline of the events of Maidan. During the pandemic I made a short claymation called Rainbow Connection that was about neighbors in one brownstone coming together to make a big rainbow window art — which is exactly what kids were doing in New York so that first responders have a moment of encouragement from their communities. I wanted to capture that moment of us coming together for our heroes. Now my country is yet again burning in flames and the only way I can advocate for help is through my art. Art brings communities together, whether it’s those who are hurting or those who are standing in solidarity. It helps us understand each other on a deeper emotional level and create conversations that media reporting doesn’t have time or attention span for.
Mulan: One of the major powers of art is its capacity for its creators and audience to reconcile with reality, to capture the thoughts and emotions of a specific time into a capsule that allows revisiting and reflections. This power is particularly crucial in the face of war and cruelty and in the recent turbulence around the world. Portraying this story from a child’s perspective, we intended to put the audiences in their most vulnerable and naive shoes, and reflect upon the emotional impact war and cruelty would inflict on the purest among us.
For more information, visit polinabuchak.com/sunflowerfield. You can follow Buchak on X/Twtter @ms_buchak.
