"GRIPPING... A GREAT CINEMATIC PROFILE OF A HEROIC CITY" — Lila Dlaboha, poet, NYC

"A MUST-WATCH… CAPTIVATING, FROM THE FIRST MINUTE TO THE LAST" — Oleksandr Prokudin, Head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration

“THIS FILM IS A CALL TO THE GLOBAL CONSCIENCE.”— Hans Petter Midttun, former Defense Attaché of Norway to Ukraine

“A FILM HEARTBREAKINGLY ARTISTIC, ORIGINAL, MOVING, TOO IMPORTANT TOO IGNORE." — Greg Palast, investigative journalist (NYT, BBC, The Observer)

“EXTRAORDINARY... CONVEYS A CERTAIN MAJESTY AND GRANDEUR, NOT UNLIKE THE ONE WE EXPERIENCE WITH A GREAT BOOK OR MOVIE.”—Jacques Dupont, documentary filmmaker

"OUR FILM ABOUT LIFE HERE" - A Kherson resident

Kherson: Human Safari is a documentary shot during the Russian war of aggression. It captures the lives of civilians hunted by drones, displaced by war, and bonded by resistance. This film is a testimony and a call to global conscience.

Kherson: Human Safari is an original documentary film created and produced by Zarina Zabrisky. All footage and interviews are original, with signed release forms and archival licenses. Civilian and military content has been reviewed and cleared by the appropriate Ukrainian press officers. Any attempt to discredit or suppress this film is being addressed through legal channels.

Your donations at work:

Please note: Direct donation links are temporarily unavailable due to PayPal’s restrictions, likely caused by confusion over the status of Kherson. While Kherson is legally and politically part of Ukraine, some platforms mistakenly flag it due to its previous occupation by Russian forces. We are actively working with PayPal to resolve this issue and using a temporary solution.

Real stories that didn't make it into the final cut. Ongoing stories from those still in Kherson and in exile.

Zarina Zabrisky - Director, Producer

Zarina Zabrisky is an award-winning author of five books and a U.S. journalist, a war correspondent for Byline Times (UK) and Euromaidan Press (UA). She has contributed to BBC News, Voice of America, TVP World, The Sunday Post, and more. She co-produced and starred in the documentary Under the Deadly Skies, exposing Russian war crimes. Her literary work has appeared in The Paris Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Longreads, and other publications.

Oleksandr Andriushchenko - Director of Photography

Oleksandr Andriushchenko is a distinguished Ukrainian photojournalist with over 30 years of experience and a staff photojournalist at Vgoru.Kherson. A founder and director of the Kherson School of Photography, he has played a key role in mentoring generations of photographers in southern Ukraine. Andriushchenko documented the Russian occupation from inside the occupied city, continuing his work under extreme conditions.

Artem Tsynskyi - Editor

Artem Tsynskyi is a Ukrainian editor and filmmaker, working as both a news editor and film editor for Suspilne Odesa and previously for the Ukrainian Information Service, one of the country’s leading online platforms. Tsynskyi’s documentary work includes widely viewed projects such as Odesa Is Not a Russian City, Our People, Warriors of the Three Elements, By Will and Iron, and Used Until… The Story of Odesa’s Twin Estuaries.

Jason N. Parkinson - Color Grading & Upscaling

Jason N. Parkinson is a UK-based video journalist with 20 years of experience covering the rise of the far right, the refugee crisis, and conflict in 16 countries, including five assignments in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, a Rory Peck Award finalist for coverage of the Egyptian Revolution and London Riots, and runner-up for Getty Images EMEA News Videographer of the Year 2024.

Yegor Irodov - Sound Designer & Re-recording Mixer

Ukrainian composer and sound designer Yegor Irodov has over 20 years of experience in film and television, with more than 150 credits and 2,000 hours of screen time. Head of Sound at Star Media Group, Irodov is also a juror for the International Emmy Awards, a voting member of the Canadian Academy of Cinema & Television, and a respected figure in international film and music communities.

Heidi Siegmund Cuda - Executive Producer

Heidi Siegmund Cuda is an Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, bestselling author, and columnist for Byline Supplement. She is co-host of the RADICALIZED Truth Survives podcast, producer/director of award-winning documentaries, and her Bette Dangerous Substack is read in 90 countries.

Oksana Taranenko - Executive Producer

Kherson: Human Safari tells the story of a city torn—but undefeated—by Russian invasion, occupation, flood, and now, a new war crime: drones hunting civilians in what locals call a “human safari.”

I came to Kherson when it was liberated in November 2022. The joy and defiance I witnessed shook me. I moved there in September 2023, and the city became my life. This film is about the people who live through daily horror but the focus isn’t horror. It is what persists despite it: art, humor, dance, meaning. Khersonians say, “It will get better,” even as drones buzz overhead.

This is not a traditional war documentary. Each chapter—Invasion, Occupation, Flood, and more—opens with a dance sequence, choreographed under fire. The dancer seems symbolic—until her story is revealed. She, too, survived. Her body speaks when words fail.

Our team lived the story we filmed. Our composer was a partisan. Our editor cut footage as Shahed drones flew above. Our DP’s home was seized; his archive destroyed.

Some buildings you see in the dance segments are gone now—hit by airstrikes after filming. The dance became a requiem.

Kherson lives. The city sings, drinks, teaches embroidery underground, and stages plays in bomb shelters. But every day more and more people are killed and injured and streets are ruined.

This film chose me. The war demanded it. If this work helps protect Kherson, I’ve done my job.

All proceeds support civilians and defenders in Kherson.

by Alyona Malyarenko

Alyona Malyarenko, a poet and survivor, offers her lived perspective on a city scarred by empires but never broken.

The Russians claim Kherson as their own, declaring to the world that the city was founded by Empress Catherine II in 1778.

The truth is, the Russian empress—German by nationality—did not found it, she simply renamed an already existing settlement. She initially envisioned a project called “New Greece” here. When that failed, she launched a new imperial campaign: “Novorossiya.” That’s how the name “Kherson” appeared on the empire’s map. The original name was erased from official documents—preserved only in the letters and records of foreign diplomats, merchants, and scholars.

Thanks to those sources, we know that Kherson was long known as Bili Vilkhovychi (or Bilikhovychi, or Vilkhovyssia) and had a twin town on the opposite bank of the river—Oleshky. Neither name came from Catherine II, but from the alder trees (vilkha) that densely covered both riverbanks. Their silver-white leaves shimmer in the sunlight when stirred by the wind.

Oleshky and Bili Vilkhovychi were southern customs outposts as early as the time of Kyivan Rus. Referred to collectively as Oleshshia, the area is mentioned in the Primary Chronicle (the Tale of Bygone Years), written in the 11th–12th centuries—more than 500 years before Catherine II was even born.

From medieval times, Oleshky and Bili Vilkhovychi were home to free people—steppe Cossacks, fishermen, river pilots, shepherds, and traders—who bowed to no one and accepted no foreign rule. At first, they called themselves Rus’, children of Kyivan Rus. Later, they called themselves Ukrainians. They were never Muscovites or Russians—but they always came to the aid of other children of Ukraine in the face of an external enemy.

When the Russians came to Kherson, they expected to find “Novorossiyans” and “Little Russians.” Instead, they found the children of the free steppe, the Great Meadow, the Dnipro Cossacks. Unarmed Kherson residents laughed in their faces—for they scorned foreign power. They laughed even though that laughter could cost them their lives in the torture chambers set up by “civilized” Russians in the cellars of the city.

The day Kherson was de-occupied became a holiday for its people—but it also marked the beginning of brutal Russian terror. Retreating to Oleshky on the opposite bank, the Russians began shelling defiant Kherson daily and nightly. Mortars, artillery, rocket systems, tanks, and drones—all are launched from twin-town Oleshky onto Kherson. On both sides of the river, Ukrainians feel not only fear, but fury and pain: the right bank is severed from the left. Oleshky is now used as a base to hunt people in Kherson. And Kherson, defending itself, is forced to fire back at beloved Oleshky—where the enemy hides in homes and forests.

A thousand-year brotherhood between Ukrainians on both banks of the Dnipro has been shattered by the Russians. Under the gaze of drones, it is not just the streets and the people that are targeted, but the very memory of the land.