Tavlo Ostrikov is a 34-year-old Ukrainian filmmaker. In 2012, he graduated from the National Aviation University. Two years later, he completed his debut short The Stop. He has since directed two further short films and one feature, U Are the Universe (2024), which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. This blend of survival drama and black comedy depicts a lonely astronaut attempting to reach the only other surviving human being, while enjoying the company of a computer with a very twisted sense of humour.

Film critic Nataliia Serebriakova spoke with Pavlo Ostrikov about the making of the film and the concept behind it.

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Nataliia Serebriakova – How did the idea for this film begin?

Pavlo Ostrkov – It all started during my student years. I was studying at the National Aviation University, and we had to put on a small play. At some point, I had this idea: what if the Earth exploded, and only a few people remained, witnessing this catastrophe? We ended up creating a 15-minute play, where I played Andriy Melnyk, but the story was entirely different. It was a student parody of space life. However, the core idea stayed with me for a long time.

At some point, the Odesa Film Festival happened, which motivated me to make films. I attended and was so inspired by the atmosphere that I realised I had to do something. I began thinking about how to develop this story. I took [Robert] McKee’s Story in an attempt to write my first script. I went through about 20 different versions of where the story could go, from space pirates to action films and thrillers. I tried all these plots until I realised I wanted to tell a story about loneliness and love. And that’s how the main storyline started to form.

NS – How did you write the script and find a producer?

PO – The first draft of the script was written in 2015. At that time, I only had The Stop – my debut short film. So, in essence, U Are the Universe was created before Graduation ’97 [2017], Mia Donna [2018], and most of my short films. Later, Yuriy Minzyanov, now deceased, watched The Stop and asked if I had anything else. I showed him the script for U Are the Universe, and he was excited about it. For a while, we even thought about pitching it, but we estimated the budget would be around $2.5 million, which was unrealistic for a debut project. He started advising me to abandon the idea, saying it was unfeasible and suggested I ground the story on earth. In hindsight, I should have listened because the journey was incredibly hard, draining my energy and health. Depression and apathy set in, especially as I saw my peers making films while I was stuck, unsure of the outcome. I often recalled those words, thinking maybe I should have made a different story. But I was determined that this story about space would be my debut.

NS – When I realised that Yuriy Minzyanov didn’t believe in the project, I started looking for other options. In 2017, I met Volodymyr Yatsenko, who said it would be tough but we could make it work.

PO – We began the journey in Canada as well. We pitched the story in Montreal, and everything was going well. We even won a pitch competition in 2019, but then the Culture Minister [of Ukraine] changed, and half of the contest results were canceled, and we were part of the unsupported half. We had to wait another year in order to reapply for the new contest, which we won again. In 2021, we began pre-production. The casting process took a year, albeit in stages, but we searched from the start, knowing how crucial it was to find the right actor for Andriy Melnyk. Without the actor, this film wouldn’t exist. In 2021, we started filming. Of course, it was difficult, but within the standard challenges of Ukrainian film production. All that remained was to film the French heroine. We had arranged for a French actress to come to Kyiv, with the shoot scheduled for March 1, 2022. But, obviously, that didn’t happen.

Besides the Frenchwoman’s scenes, we had to shoot all the outer space sequences, which were technically the most challenging, involving wires and suspensions in the studio. When the full-scale invasion began, we forgot about the film for months. Only by autumn did we decide to try finishing it because it weighed on all of us, knowing we were so close to completion. We tried to finish it, but the French actress refused to come, even though we spent a long time convincing her that, despite the war, people were still living and we would manage to shoot. But just as she was planning to come, Kyiv was hit by over 100 missiles targeting the energy infrastructure. She said she didn’t want to die and refused to come.

NS – You’ve created a very authentic world inside the spaceship. To me, it resembles a Soviet-era research institute. How did you come up with this Ukrainian space concept?

PO – In my early drafts, I followed the Hollywood route because that’s the only space cinema I’d seen. It took a long time to break away from that paradigm, the stereotype that space had to look like Interstellar [Christopher Nolan, 2014], Gravity [Alfonso Cuaron, 2013], or The Martian [Ridley Scott, 2015]. But at some point, I had a simple realisation: why not create a Ukrainian space through our own lens, with all its pros and cons? That’s how the idea of the spaceship came about.

We didn’t set out to create a Soviet vibe, but we leaned towards retrofuturism because I like that style. Alien: Romulus [Fede Alvarez, 2024] recently came out, showing that this aesthetic is making a comeback, with a nod to the ’80s and ’70s. The ship’s only purpose is to transport nuclear waste, not to provide comfort or impress with its design. It’s all very functional, like a new Ukrainian train. The design was supposed to be a bit better, but due to the budget, we had to use materials that were already available. Some elements were built, and others were found on storage shelves, resulting in this battered cargo ship.

NS – I assume you watched a lot of space movies… Did you read any science fiction or professional works on space to make the journey look authentic?

PO – At one point, the script changed significantly, as I changed myself. I came up with this idea when I was a naive student, and some of that naivety remains in the script. But you can see how it evolves with more meaningful details, and my understanding of space changed too. Few have seen the first version of the script, but from an astrophysical standpoint, it was quite bad. I read Kip Thorne’s book – he’s an astrophysicist who helped Christopher Nolan on Interstellar. He later released a book about his collaboration with Nolan and the ideas they developed. I also read The Martian by Andy Weir, which Ridley Scott adapted into a film. I also read A Brief History of Time although I might be mistaken – it’s Stephen Hawking’s popular science work about black holes and space in general.

I’ve really gotten into astrophysics and science fiction after doing all this research. It captivated me more and more. We consulted two Ukrainian astrophysicists, Dmytro Yakubovsky and Oleksiy Parnovsky. Both are brilliant people. It’s a pity we couldn’t implement all their suggestions due to the budget. You’d tell the post-production team that the flame from the nozzle should come out at a wider angle, and they wouldn’t understand how this small detail changes the film overall. But everything costs money, so we tried to create as realistically as possible within our limits.

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Pavlo Ostrakov is pictured at the top of this interview. The other image is a still from U Are The Universe.