In recent years, a number of Indian films and series including RRR, 99 Songs, Dev, Winner and Special Ops 1.5 were filmed in various locations in Ukraine. Location managers and production assistants say that in the last few years Ukraine was becoming a popular film shooting destination for Indian projects because it offers picturesque locations at lower costs, and shooting there used to be 20-30% cheaper than other Eastern European countries.

Natarajan Ramji, a location manager, who arranges shoots abroad for Tamil, Telugu and Hindi films, says, “For Indian filmmakers, Ukraine was the most suitable location in Europe from a financial perspective and also in terms of filmmaking, with good local crew and actors.”

Natarajan Ramji says, “The locations there can be matched with the settings of other places, like Paris, London, the US and even some Indian locales. The people, too, were friendly. While January to April is peak winter there, we had a few shoots planned there from May.”

He was also part of the shoot of an untitled Tamil film starring Saravanan Arul and Urvashi Rautela, which was shot in Ukraine in December. He was in Kiev in the first week of February this year as well to organise permissions for the shoot of an upcoming film. “Obviously, it is not going to be considered as a probable location for some time now,” Ramji adds.

Satish Sharma, director of Indo-Soviet Films that coordinates for shoots in Ukraine, says, “Almost a decade back I coordinated the shoot of a series Raja Vaska in Ukraine, India and Russia. Since then we have been doing a lot of projects in Ukraine. In fact, my next project Marshall, directed by Ganesh Acharya, was to be filmed in Ukraine in May. We had planned the shoot in summer and winter, but now it doesn’t seem possible. My last project in Ukraine was Neeraj Pandey’s Special Ops. We were also planning to shoot Shivaay in Ukraine, but at that time also there was news of some disturbances so we changed the location to Bulgaria. A number of songs from south films have been shot in Kiev, Lviv and the Carpathian mountains”

Satish adds that Ukraine was becoming a popular location among Indian filmmakers when Coronavirus hit. “My partner in Ukraine was planning to organise an event in India in January to promote Ukraine’s film shooting locations, but due to Omicron he couldn’t come. My friends from Ukraine have been showing me the situation on video calls and sending videos of the place where they are hiding. It doesn’t look like we will be able to film in the country anytime soon,” he says.

— With inputs from Niharika Lal and M Suganth