Andrey Svetinsky

It’s an interesting story. In general, I’ve been constantly traveling all my life — I’m even a bit addicted to it. And since I studied cinematography at SPUFT (Saint Petersburg University of Film and Television) and I make a living as a cinematographer, I can’t help but film what’s happening around me.

That’s why I’m always searching for places that can satisfy my thirst for new experiences — and at the same time, I capture them on camera. One day, I was scrolling through Instagram and came across a post by a photographer. He wrote about how he was in some terrifying garbage district in Egypt, and he got hit in the head with a rock for filming — he was just photographing a couple, a man and a woman walking together. The man got angry, ran after him, hit him, and started beating him up. The police got involved, and the photographer was detained for a long time. There were pictures in the post of his bloody head and a few shots of this place — Manshiyat Naser, the Garbage City.

I looked at it and thought: weird, I’ve never seen anything like that — I clearly have to go there! I googled what the place was, decided to go for New Year. I had about ten days. I arrived, walked there on foot, looked around and instantly realized — I need to start filming right now. All my other plans for Cairo — exploring the city, maybe seeing the pyramids — everything got postponed. This needed to be a film. I basically moved into the neighborhood for more than a week and went out every single day from morning to night — I was practically living there with them, in all of that.

Fascinating. I think you really need to do something wrong to get hit in the head with a rock, because nothing like that happened to me. Maybe when you film women — that’s really the only issue. People start pushing you, covering the lens with their hands, trying to damage the camera. Women (in the Zabbaleen community) are actually in a better position than in most of the Islamic world. They don’t have to wear headscarves, they work alongside men — they’re on the sorting lines. But they’re very protected, and because of that, sometimes people just won’t let you film.

But otherwise, the worst that happened to me was that people gave me Coke, Sprite, or Fanta on the street — just because I showed interest in them. People took selfies with me, treated me very kindly, let me into their homes. Even when I ran into someone’s house uninvited. For example, to film the pigeon towers — like the one in the final shot of the film — you have to get into a private home. Each tower is owned by a family, and they all hang around their rooftops. It’s not like you can just casually walk in. And I had to get on one of those towers.

Of course, they wouldn’t just let a white guy inside for no reason. There's always this excessive attention — and once someone looks into the camera, the shot’s ruined. So you have to be stealthy. I don’t know — maybe I should have used fake tan or something. But I didn’t really invent any special tricks. I mostly just filmed from a distance, through crowds.

So, to get on that pigeon tower, I had to get into someone’s house. And nobody’s going to let you in just like that. The best solution I came up with was to just run in. While the guy was chasing me up the stairs — he wasn’t as fast as I was, for a variety of reasons — I managed to reach the roof. Once you’re up there, if you pick a tower where someone is already standing — like the pigeoneer himself — you can talk to him and ask him to yell down to the guy chasing you and say, “It’s fine, he’s a tourist, don’t worry.” That’s what happened in my case. So no one beat me up, and I got the shot.

If you pick a tower where no one’s up there, then yeah, you’ll probably have trouble when they catch up to you. But everything is instantly resolved if you pay — 200 or 300 Egyptian pounds to the guy, which is like 3 British pounds or about 300–400 rubles. Basically, pennies.

Same thing with garbage truck drivers — you can pay any of them about 200 rubles, and they’ll let you ride on top of the trash pile. You just sit on all of it and get that precious traveling shot through the city — which opens the main part of my film. That’s how I got that scene, for example. You can also ride donkeys, by the way.

Honestly, I have no idea how hepatitis spreads, so I didn’t even think about that. As for the camera — it was always on me. The worst-case scenario would be if I fell from somewhere. Or if someone really attacked me. There was this one time I climbed onto a ruined mosque. No one was there, but one guy was sitting below — probably working on the reconstruction. I guess he didn’t like me climbing up, and he started waiting for me with a stick while I sat on the minaret, eating a doughnut. I saw him sitting there and thought, “Okay, we’re gonna have to deal with this.”

So I climbed down. He saw me, I walked up to a little wooden barrier between us, and he started banging on it with his stick, nearly hitting me. I figured that wasn’t going to work, so I went around — while looking for a stick myself, just in case. I had already packed my camera away in my backpack so it wouldn’t get damaged.

Then a police officer showed up and started questioning me, asking for documents. But it all worked out. I think I paid him a thousand rubles — a decent bribe for that country. But I don’t regret it. That doughnut on the minaret was worth it.

I guess it’s in my DNA. My family always traveled, and I started traveling alone around age 14 — around Russia at first, and abroad from age 16. It’s not even love anymore, I think it’s an addiction. If I stay in one place for more than two or three months, I start to feel really bad.

But it also helps — I end up having more projects in the editing or development stage at the same time. My creative output increases because of it. So there are both pros and cons.

I had one universal lens — the Sony 24–105mm f/4. And the camera was a Sony A7 IV. The maximum zoom I could get was 105mm, plus the 1.6x crop — so around 170mm. Of course, whenever I could, I got close. I have wide shots and close-ups too. But that lens was the best possible choice for this kind of shoot. I was really happy with it.

Later, I upgraded to the Sony A7S III — so I could switch to the native ISO 12800 and film in totally unlit environments in true documentary mode. And to me, that’s the best thing out there right now.

That’s the interesting part — I didn’t know anything. I didn’t watch anything, even afterward. Once I had finished the shoot and written the voiceover text, I started looking for other films on the topic — and couldn’t find much at all. I wanted to see how similar my take was to what others had done, and I realized: almost no one had filmed this.

And that shot — where I film the pigeoneer from his own tower, waving a flag from below, or standing right in front of him while he whistles — formally, no one’s ever captured anything like that before. I might be the first person in cinema history to film it that way. And honestly, that warms my soul.

It’s the film’s climax, yes. And that character with the flag symbolizes the spirit of freedom — and the idea that happiness isn’t necessarily tied to material things.

Yeah. And they’re really tasty, I’ll tell you that. If you think about it, it’s not that weird. That guy told me he doesn’t eat them himself — but maybe he just said that because I’m European. Still, when you run a farm, you love your cow or goat, but you also eat them — because that’s life, and honestly, it tastes good. It just feels weird for us city people. But not for them.

Once you spend time in these communities, you develop a kind of tolerance for this contrast — that it’s not a big deal. Plus, that guy told me funny stories — like how he sells pigeons to someone, and they fly back to his coop later. So he sells them again — recycling pigeons, basically.

It’s hard to film women. Hard to get into people’s homes. And, of course, I couldn’t talk to anyone. I don’t speak Arabic. They all speak Arabic. That was the biggest challenge.
The only language I had access to was money. And sure, that worked a lot of the time. But because of that, there are some — not exactly criticisms, but comments — about how my film shows them like animals in a National Geographic documentary, without giving them a voice. Maybe it’s partly the voiceover, the tone of it — but yeah, that’s the issue.

Of course I did. But I only had ten days in Cairo, and I couldn’t spend more than eight days there anyway — by the end I was seriously starting to lose my mind. So, at least two days had to be reserved just to not be there. Naturally, I had that thought, but for that you need a guide who knows someone among the garbage collectors, someone who’ll let you into their home. He would give the interview in Arabic, then you’d ask the guide in English, he’d translate to Arabic. I didn’t have the time, the means, or the finances to do all that. It would make sense to expand the film, go back again with more financial backing and include interviews not in the "talking head" format, but at least as voiceover — so you wouldn’t have that sense of imperialism in the voiceover, me telling how they live. I get that criticism, it’s totally fair, but I simply don’t speak Arabic. I can’t do anything about that, and I absolutely don’t want to learn it. It’s an extremely difficult language.

In the first days — pure ecstasy, of course. You see the scale of it, how it really is a city within a city. It’s quite flat, meaning it takes maybe 30 minutes to walk from one end to the other — not long at all. It’s near a cliffside, from where I shot a significant portion of the footage. To walk its full length without stopping would probably take four hours. The terrain is interesting, and it’s visually very beautiful composition-wise. For me, it’s really important that the footage doesn’t look like the worst kind of documentary — no shaky cam, good composition, solid color, strong image in terms of cinematography. And I think it’s clear from the film that it’s, in a way, a cinematographer’s documentary, because I’m a DP by training, not a director — this was my directorial debut.

Emotionally, at first, you walk around enjoying every second. You eat where they eat — it’s incredible. You arrive in Cairo and, for safety, book a hotel in the center. I booked the cheapest one, of course, but still, when you step out, the entrance is all grand. Cairo looks beautiful, but very imperial. A lot of Art Deco. And it’s a completely different state from the one you’re in when you're in the garbage city.

When you eat, it's not even a proper canteen, more like a hole-in-the-wall joint with three or four tables, open to the street without any doors, just like a stall. Right outside, garbage trucks drive by, bits of trash flying out while you’re eating pasta of various shapes and textures, covered in some kind of tomato gloop of unknown origin. First, it tastes amazing. Second, it costs about twenty rubles a portion — enough to stuff you for half a day. And there’s music playing, a great vibe. No water — but there is vinegar. Because the only thing on the table is vinegar.

On the first day, you just scout — walk around all the interesting locations, mark them on the map, take notes about what’s where and how. Then you start working through each location. And that’s really fascinating too. You might sit and wait at one spot for a while. But by the end of the day, you're exhausted. So much walking, so much trash, the constant smell — it’s just constant. I wasn’t super bothered by it, but still, it’s not something you're used to. And there’s a lot of attention. Words like “Hello,” “I fuck your mother” are thrown at you every 30 seconds — because that’s all they know in English. It’s kind of funny. And the kids constantly pester you. That’s the biggest problem. They follow you around. When you walk long enough through these narrow streets, they form a crowd around you or behind you.

Even when you try to shoo them away — saying “Guys, I need to shoot,” because the crowd creates noise — they all look into the camera, which is absolutely unacceptable. If someone looks at the camera, it’s a tragedy. My heart breaks. I have to get rid of the kids immediately. So I say, “Guys, go away.” But they don’t leave — they just get more excited. It’s a total disaster.

Eventually, they start throwing stones at you — it escalates to physical aggression. So I found no other solution but to let one of them come close, then chase him. Of course, he runs, but I’m faster, like I said. He runs into a building, and you grab him in the stairwell, drag him outside — because you’re furious — throw him to the ground, pin him down like a gladiator, and shout something in Russian profanity, so they understand that I’m dangerous, that I’m not just some tourist. Technically I didn’t hit the kids — but it may have looked like it. After that, they back off. They throw stones at you one last time as you walk off into the sunset. You feel victorious, but also banished — in that very moment. But at least you’re no longer being followed, and you can keep working. And that’s what matters.
My position as a documentarian — and in art in general — is that nothing and no one can stand between me and the result. If I need to violate someone’s private space, if I need to push someone physically, I won’t deny myself that — because for me, art is more important than my life or someone else’s.

Not that I’d kill someone — on the contrary, my views are entirely rooted in pacifism and nonviolence. Because I live in Russia. But when it comes to art — there’s nothing more important than that.

I think with this film, I wouldn’t have intervened at any point. Society is structured so that there are people whose job is to intervene. My job as a documentarian is solely to record and present what happens in the most expressive and essential way possible. That’s my duty to society — not to step in or try to prevent something. There are mechanisms in place for that. I’m the one who shows. There’s a great movie about this — Nightcrawler. It has a core of truth, even though in the end, he films his colleague dead — that I wouldn’t do. But I really do believe the most important thing I can do is record.

The goal of the film was to show and convey my attitude toward the idea of living a happy life. The film is light for me. It shows, first, that maybe we live in exactly the same way — we’re just as used to our own trash as they are to theirs. And second, happiness doesn’t work like “here’s prosperity” and “there’s poverty.” You can have a child and play with him in a huge garbage pit and feel totally content. And that’s not some kind of deviance. No — I think we all live like that in some way. As for the perception of the community — yes, of course, as a European, it’s unpleasant to see how Muslims discriminate against them and confine them to this enclave. And when swine flu broke out, the authorities came and killed all their pigs — because they’re the only ones in Cairo who eat pork, since they’re Christian. That’s upsetting, but what can I do? I can mention that they live in an isolated community. But if we’re talking about real advocacy, I’d rather fight for things that are truly close to me — in terms of my background, my citizenship. In Cairo, the most I’m ready to do is show and tell. And besides — no one invited me to act politically. Hopefully, they will — in Russia.

I think a documentarian who goes to places like this — and not just places like this — shouldn’t even know the word “fear.” You can take precautions, that’s fine. But fear — what’s the point? I don’t really get its function. You can protect yourself with rational thought — use your head. But fear is an emotional thing — your hands start shaking, the camera shakes. Why do you need that? You need a good image.

Mostly, people are impressed. I really love that feeling — when you're in the cinema, the film is playing, and you watch people’s reactions. They sit there covering their mouths with their hands, shaking their heads like they can’t believe what they’re seeing. And I think: “Yes. That’s exactly right. I agree with you guys completely.” And yeah, as I mentioned, some people saw the film as imperialistic. On the one hand, I can’t ignore that — these are people I care about. But I also completely understand what they’re thinking, and what information is at the forefront for them — it’s the Russian and Western liberal crowd. Yes, the problem exists, I won’t argue. But there’s nothing I can do about what they describe. I can’t change where I’m from, the fact that I’m Russian, that I’m European — and I’ll always approach something like this thinking, “Whoa, fascinating, show me more, this is unusual.” Or at the very least, I need to go through that stage first — before I can get into their everyday life and shoot about their personal problems, as if I’m blind to this incredible, indescribable difference between our lives. To immediately jump into their concerns, their hardships, and give them a voice — that would require a much longer production, and much more lived experience in the region I’m filming. I do want that, of course — but within this project, unfortunately, it just wasn’t possible.

That's a difficult question. Right now, I’m leaning more towards “no,” at least for the time being. I've finally figured out which industry I want to work in — the Russian one — and what kind of films I want to make — Russian ones. So I’m thinking more about developing my own style. Probably even more in fiction than documentary. Right now, it's quite popular to work at the intersection of fiction and documentary. For example, the New Cinema schools in Moscow and St. Petersburg — they’re quite similar, often share the same teachers — are very much pushing this approach. And maybe there’s something to it.

But at this historical moment, I can't really afford to spend time and money on studying. I'm in Russia now, on standby, at a time when things are happening — or even when nothing is happening — you still need to keep the lens pointed in the right direction. And our direction is westward, if you know what I mean. And films like Russians at War, let’s say, don’t really exist right now. I haven’t seen others like it — and I haven’t even seen Russians at War myself because it’s not publicly available. And yeah, I think it would be a crime not to use this historical moment to document what's happening.

Yes, of course. I’d like to film war — in the broad sense of the word, too. I’d gladly go to Myanmar right now, where there’s a civil war and half the country is under opposition control. I recently heard the news that one nuclear power attacked another. I’m talking about India and Pakistan. I thought, oh! Time to look for tickets to Pakistan. I actually have a second passport — because I have an Indian visa in the first one, and with that they won’t let me in. And yeah, I think being a war documentarian is just about the coolest thing I could imagine doing.

And again, looking at the path of directors like the one who made Russians at War — going to Lebanon to film Palestinian refugees, then somewhere in Africa to film Congolese people — yeah, it’s all extremely necessary. And again, even if you’re just filming for the drawer, it’s still necessary to capture what’s happening in Russia and what Russia is doing in other places.

It’s hard to talk about, because it actually changed me a lot. But I can’t even put it into words for myself yet. So I’ll try to outline it in broad strokes. Since it became my directorial debut in documentary filmmaking, it made me start looking at the world through the lens of — what else is interesting here? And that’s important because I realized that people are an extraordinary source of curiosity and fascination. And you really shouldn’t waste time on emotional judgment of people’s actions. Even in the most extreme cases — like war criminals — the most I can bring myself to say is, “Please sit down, I’d like to ask you everything on camera. You’re extremely interesting to me.”

And from this endless curiosity about people comes a kind of acceptance of the terrible things happening — and even a kind of love for the human being as a phenomenon. Which is weird for me. It’s something very new. And this overlapped with the experience of deciding to return to Russia — of ending this long isolation from Russia, from the Russian-speaking space — and now I feel literally saturated with endless love for any Russian-speaking person. That’s what emigration does to a Russian person.

It was very simple. I realized I was deeply unhappy, and that everything good that had happened in my life happened here. I realized that I’m very Russian. I didn’t know that. I thought I was a cosmopolitan, that I could find a place in any society and enjoy learning about other cultures. I’ve always traveled — I’ve been to over seventy countries — so I thought I wouldn’t have any problem. But it turned out that Russia is the best country in the world.

I just understood that this couldn’t go on — I was living entirely in the past and in memories, and I needed to stop trying to fit into this Western narrative. When you go to a store and need to show your passport to buy scissors, just to prove you’re over 18 — and after you’ve lived for a while in a democracy, in a world of imaginary problems — you start to become very interested in the specifics of life in dictatorships, in the issues of totalitarian societies, in war, and in real, broken human lives. You want to be around all that, focus on it, think about it — because that’s what really matters.

I think more of the same. I’ve got a few projects in editing right now. I know for sure I won’t stop traveling. There are still a million places like that around the world. For example, South America is completely unexplored for me. I know that once I get there, I’ll just disappear for a year. There’s also all of Africa. Might get killed there, of course — but we’ll see. Maybe I won’t. It’s unclear for now — we’re working on it. I think I’ll be able to keep moving along a path that leads me to places where not everyone can go, where more is happening than in other places. And by shooting that, and showing my perspective — embedding the same kind of thought I put into Between Garbage and God — I’ll be able to release it as well. And it’ll become public too.