Orlando filmmaker shows human side of Ukraine war at Global Peace Film Festival

Remember those vocational aptitude tests from high school? Maybe we should have taken them more seriously.

As a teenager, Erin Laine took one and saw her classmates told they should be nurses or teachers.

“I got one answer,” Laine says. “You should direct films.”

But she was 14 and living in rural Illinois: “I was like, yeah, I’ll get right on that.”

Today, Laine’s documentary “We Support You?” — a look at the Ukrainian spirit as observed in a refugee camp in Poland — is part of the annual Global Peace Film Festival, which starts showing its socially conscious movies Sept. 19.

Laine’s artistic journey began in the fine arts, and when she moved to Orlando eight years ago, she did live painting demonstrations for corporate events, weddings and other commissioned work.

But being a solitary artist felt isolating in a new place.

“I was starting a new life and really wanted to meet people,” she says. In particular: “I wanted to find a creative outlet where I could meet people.”

So she signed up for an acting class at Class Act Studios in Winter Park — and promptly fell in love with filmmaking. Her visual artist background proved useful.

“It’s always about the composition, the color scheme, all these things translate,” she says. “It just goes frame to frame instead of filling just one fame.”

The first film for her Fourth Man Productions, a 2018 6-minute short called “Project Gratitude,” was an experimental silent documentary about the emotion of feeling grateful. It was featured at several film festivals and is available through Amazon Prime.

“I Just Want You to be Happy,” another short film that’s also available through Amazon, debuted at the Rendezvous Film Festival in Amelia Island in the fall of 2018. Laine wrote, co-directed, produced, scored and starred in the film, which has won multiple awards. It’s a love story gone wrong in which a woman tries to do anything and everything to please her husband.

“We Support You?” was born from Laine’s frustration as the war in Ukraine dragged on — but seemed to have faded from Americans’ minds.

“There was a lot of support drawing people together” in the days after Russia’s February 2022 invasion of eastern Ukraine, says Laine, who noted the yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flags on display, the social-media signs of support and fundraisers. “Come October, it was like everybody had forgotten about it.”

Laine’s church, God’s House Orlando, had been supporting Ukrainians displaced by the war, and she “read Poland had absorbed a lot of refugees” — numbering in the millions. “I wondered if we could go over there and help them.”

The “we” in that sentence refers to herself and her best friend, Brandon Hofmann, with whom she runs Resurrect Wood Refinishing, a cabinet-refurbishing company. It’s a way to stay connected to the tactile visual art world.

“I still work with my hands every day,” she says. “I’m covered in dust as we speak!”

With Hofmann, who served as a production assistant on her film, she flew to Krakow. Though the pair were greeted warmly as Americans, “it took us a week to get people to trust us,” she says.

Eventually, they found work in a refugee camp.

“It’s mainly women — the men stayed back to fight,” Laine says, “and it’s mainly women with their children. Ukrainians have big families. There were sometimes women with four children living in a tiny room.”

Laine and Hofmann were prepared to do anything: “We were saying, “We’ll clean toilets, we’ll serve food.”

But discovering they were artists, the camp’s leadership instead asked the pair to minister to the inhabitants’ souls.

“They really needed help with morale,” Laine says. So, while they searched for heaters to help the refugees get through the cold Polish winter, they also made up games for the children — a diversion to give their mothers a moment or two of needed peace.

Laine taught a yoga class that lifted spirits.

“So many came up sobbing afterward, saying, ‘I didn’t know how much I needed that,'” she recalls.

And as she earned the refugees’ trust, she recorded some of their stories.

“I didn’t want to be invasive,” she said. “I didn’t want to be like, ‘let me glorify your pain.'”

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But she wanted their voices to be heard. And she thought her fellow Americans could learn something from these brave and resilient refugees: “How can we be more grateful as Americans? How can we be more aware of how good we have it? We take a lot for granted.”

The documentary, which runs about half an hour, was edited by her frequent collaborator Fred Zara after she and Hofmann returned home.

“I think it’s very hopeful,” she says of her film, “We Support You?” — which underscores the resolve of the Ukrainian people. At the festival, it screens as part of the “Helping Hands” documentary shorts program at 3 p.m. Sept. 23 in Crummer Auditorium on the Rollins College campus, 1000 Holt Ave. in Winter Park.

“My heart went out to those women,” Laine says. “The film shows the power of what can happen when people come together for a cause.”

Global Peace Film Festival

• What: A collection of socially conscious films focused on improving the world, with accompanying talks and other events. Peace Day in the Park features free family events on Sept. 16 at the Winter Park Library. An exhibit of South African photographer Peter Morey’s images of Nelson Mandela will be on view at CityArts, 39 S. Magnolia Ave. in downtown Orlando, beginning Sept. 21. A peace-themed art exhibit by Orange County Public Schools students is displayed at Orange County Administration Building, 201 S. Rosalind Ave. in Orlando, Sept. 18-29.

• When: The in-person festival runs Sept. 18-23. The films are available online Sept. 25-Oct. 1.

• Where: Movie screenings take place at various locations, many at Rollins College in Winter Park.

• Info: Get the full schedule and complete details at peacefilmfest.org.

Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find more arts news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com/arts, and go to orlandosentinel.com/theater for theater news and reviews.