The “Eva Stories” series of viral videos that combine into a film about human experiences of the Holocaust has created a precedent by uniquely mixing social media, cinematography, and history.
Based on real experiences but with an added, modern twist, the film tells the story of a Jewish teenager Eva, caught up in the horror and nightmares of the Holocaust but asks an unusual question: What if she had Instagram?
That rhetorical question, involving the two non-intersecting worlds, inspired the project and became its slogan.
Filmed in Ukraine by local production company ColorFilm, alongside Israeli company POV Shahar Segal Productions, “Eva Stories” was shared as 70 Instagram “stories,” reaching out to the social media generation on one of the world’s most popular platforms.
The project was broadcast live on Instagram on May 1 marking Israel’s annual Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day, dedicated to six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
The Instagram account hosting “Eva Stories” has gone viral reaching over 1.6 million followers.
The story idea belongs to Israeli businessman Mati Kochavi and his daughter Maya, who both co-directed the social media film.
“We were looking for a way to deal with this memory and manage this memory in a way that is going to be relevant for the younger generation,” Kochavi said in an interview to American broadcaster CNN.
Kochavi funded the production of “Eva Stories,” which he said cost several million dollars.
The social media film recreates the real diary of Hungarian Jew Eva Heyman, portrayed by British actress Mia Quiney.
Eva started the diary on her 13th birthday in 1944 with descriptions of her family, friends, her first romantic crush and school. Her story took a dark twist however, as the teenager moved on to portraying the Nazi invasion of Hungary and the new, humiliating laws and ghettos that German forces introduced.
Although “Eva Stories” received international acclaim and media attention, some criticized the film for trivializing the Holocaust by using Instagram filters and emojis. The creators of the project fended off that criticism.
“Social media, especially Instagram, is shallow if you’re looking for content that is shallow,” the film’s co-director Maya Kochavi told CNN. “And if you’re looking for content that is powerful and has magnitude and can cause revolutions even, you will easily find it there.”
Technical challenge
Ukrainian production company ColorFilm mostly films commercials. They had already been cooperating with Israeli productions for around two years by the time the “Eva Stories” project team reached out to them in February.
ColorFilm had to find numerous props, such as military uniforms and arms, but also face the technical challenge of filming vertical videos to meet the Instagram story format.
ColorFilm’s executive producer Yana Kartun says that the company, however, wasn’t afraid to experiment.
“We love challenges — it’s like conquering new heights,” Kartun told the Kyiv Post.
In the film, Eva often holds the camera herself shooting selfie videos while expressing her feelings or describing something happening around her. This, of course, resembles millions of Instagram stories uploaded to the platform every day. However, what the girl talks about in her videos is very different from the usual Instagram content.
“It’s the middle of the night. I can’t fall asleep. The Germans have reached my city,” Eva says, crying as she shoots a selfie video wearing pajamas.
The camera had to be light enough for the young actress to hold. So the company settled on using a smartphone and a small specially equipped camera instead of the usual bulkier equipment.
The shooting took place in Lviv, a city of 720,000 people located 540 kilometers southwest of Kyiv, in March. The city’s historical center provided the best scenery to imitate Hungary of 1944.
Kartun says that the local authorities were very accommodating, giving ColorFilm permission to shoot some large-scale scenes including a parade with tanks.
However, as the shooting took place around a week before the Ukrainian presidential election, with tensions high throughout the country, the team of the film had to take some extra security measures to prevent any violence against the Nazi props.
“We always unfolded the Nazi flags right before filming so that they don’t disturb the citizens,” Kartun says.
Emotional challenge
The cast of “Eva Stories” was an international mix with the main roles played by British actors and the minor ones by Ukrainians.
Ukrainian dancer and actor Bogdan Ruban, 26, played Eva’s first crush, a teenage boy named Pista. His character, just like Eva and many others, went through a heartbreaking transformation from a cheerful boy playing soccer and enjoying ice cream with a girl he likes to a victim of the Nazis.
Ruban says it was quite a task to take on such a role.
“I just wanted to be sincere in the shot and wanted to get at least a little closer to that Pista who lived at that time,” Ruban told the Kyiv Post.
It was the masterful guidance of co-directors Mati and Maya Kochavi that helped the actors go through the transformation, they said. Kartun says that Kochavi made a wise decision to follow the diary chronology.
“So that we were able to go from the most positive state to the tragic one step by step,” he says.
All stories end
The following paragraphs contain information about how “Eva Stories” concludes.
Producers told the Kyiv Post that the team was filming only several scenes a day because of how emotionally draining the job was, sometimes making the crew cry on set.
Before filming the episode in a ghetto where dozens of people lived in a single room with no daylight, the actors were locked in a room for several hours to experience it.
“It helped us a lot that we kind of lived through these scenes,” Ruban said.
Ruban says that the way Mati Kochavi was getting actors into the right mood was “something.”
“It was coming from inside. It’s his history and he wanted to share it,” Ruban said. “He once told me it was his task as a director to deliver the story that happened in 1944, and that my task was to show what people can do to other people.”
The film finishes where Eva’s real diary ended: when the girl was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp in then-occupied Poland, where she was killed.
According to her diary, the girl dreamed of becoming a famous news photographer.
“Eva, we hope that through this project, we made your dream come true,” the film’s final shot reads.
