In 2014, Vita Maria Drygas was filming in a war zone. She had travelled to the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine to pick up footage for a documentary when she spotted a handwritten advert offering “cheap” tours of the frontline. “It was a mindfuck,” says the 39-year-old Polish director over a video call from Warsaw, with quiet intensity.
She found the idea of people buying tickets to the frontline, like a theatre production, profoundly shocking: “It was impossible. I didn’t believe it.” At first, she assumed that the advert was a sick joke or maybe a Russian provocation. But back in Poland, digging around on the internet, she discovered the hidden world of war jollies: “A huge branch of tourism that is very underground.”
