By Jane Shevchuk
Jane Shevchuk is a documentary filmmaker and director with over 15 years of experience. Originally from Ukraine, she relocated to London four years ago, where she continues to develop her film work and is currently completing a Liberal Arts degree at Birkbeck, University of London, with a focus on creative non-fiction writing. Her work explores memory, identity, and the experience of migration. You will find all of this in her story.
When you live in the centre of Europe, it’s hard to imagine what a refugee is. You saw them on TV, mostly from distant countries where war had come. Or the search for a better life had forced these unfortunate people to swim, flee, escape, without belongings, without a past, and without a future.
Constance didn’t believe that an armed invasion was possible, but it happened. Early in the morning, it was like a film. Sirens, explosions, shelters, curfews, empty shelves in the shops—her town and country faced a new reality.
Constance had only her father. At this difficult moment, he started drinking and didn’t want to make a decision; he stopped being a father and became a child. Even months later, when the troops left and her town and life was returning, he didn’t want to go back to life.
Constance didn’t know how to move on in her homeland, not only because there was no support, but also because, by nationality, she was half the person who had attacked her country. She knew both languages as her mother tongue, she spent holidays in the aggressor’s country and at home, and there were relatives in both countries. Rejecting a part of herself was something she didn’t want to do.
Her past life, like the lives of others, had ended in one day. And the new rules were forcing her out of her familiar society.
She applied for refugee status in England. It was a blow to her father—he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t take him with her; he cursed her, her dead mum, and grandmother. No matter how hard Constance tried to get through to her father, he wouldn’t hear.
They stopped communicating forever.
And now she’s standing at Heathrow Airport, waiting for her suitcase on the belt, and it’s still not there. She went to the window to clarify where her things were; she was told that the luggage was lost—write an application for a search. At first, she cried a lot. She had only a rucksack with a computer and a bag of shoes on her shoulder, just because it was overweight.
A new life in a new country was beginning, where the past didn’t matter and the future was hazy.
An hour and a half on the London Underground and she was in East London, an area where all the refugees lived, mostly of a different skin colour and religion. As she stepped off the tube she could feel the stares—she was different.
Constance was no longer someone who spoke the enemy language; she was no longer someone who worked in television and made good money. She had nothing and needed to find herself again.
