What a title for a documentary: Hell Jumper is the nickname given to a particular kind of overseas volunteer in Ukraine, one who specialises in driving to the frontline to pick up stranded civilians. Chris Parry, a young Cornishman addicted to adventure and compassion, was one of them until he was shot dead by Russian mercenaries in January 2023. He was 28.
The film commemorating Parry is blessed by modern technologies. Hell jumpers strap digital cameras to themselves to record their evacuations; Parry’s habit of leaving voice notes for loved ones means we also have access to his thoughts, clearly spoken.
Hell Jumper is, more importantly, directed by Paddy Wivell, and if you saw the superb series Kids you’ll recognise Wivell’s friendly voice, softly lobbing impertinent questions from behind the camera. You’ll also know his strange ability to create an environment where interviewees recalling their biggest traumas are happy to answer those questions, revealing difficult truths other film-makers might have left unsaid.
Through Parry’s former colleagues we learn that the Hell Jumpers formed as a loose international network, connected via WhatsApp and Instagram and unbound by any official organisation. Once they became known, they began receiving messages giving the names and addresses of people requiring evacuation, sent by the Ukrainian civilians themselves or, more often, by their younger, worried relatives.
The film’s first surprise is that such missions were being undertaken within weeks of Russia invading. Most of us heard the news and reacted with concern before returning to our regular lives, but a certain kind of person felt a calling. A Dundee retail worker was stacking shelves with the day’s newspapers, saw a bloodied Ukrainian on a front page, and left Scotland without delay. A carpenter from Canada received word that Ukraine was under attack and departed within a few days, ignoring his wife’s pleas for him to stay.
Wivell demonstrates that while these people were certainly heroes, they weren’t entirely selfless. They had found a purpose in life that had previously eluded them. Parry’s family, led by his grieving but luminously proud parents, tell of a young man who was always out, always active, always looking for the next escapade.
When he took a break halfway through his hell-jumping stint to visit home, he had entirely lost interest in idyllic England, finding the comforts of the first world grotesque and meaningless. His fellow jumpers report the same, and it’s clear that this disaffection was within them already. Ukraine’s agony just brought it to the surface.
Another sharp edge that Wivell is willing to touch is the validation offered to the Hell Jumpers by social media. Instagram accounts were a necessity, since the evacuations were funded by follower donations, but racking up likes and shares became its own quest, and had odd effects on the core mission. Engagement went up if the hell jumper revealed their own personality, rather than just saving lives. The numbers were higher if the video contained cats or dogs affected by the war, rather than merely humans. Most crucially, the chance of going viral increased the more dangerous the mission was.
Parry’s Ukrainian girlfriend Olya is, thanks to the rapport Wivell has with her, willing to discuss how they argued in their last weeks together, because he was accepting solo assignments in places nobody else was willing to go. Olya’s description of a romance forged in adversity remains sweet, but it’s more affecting for being presented unvarnished: once Parry had been bitten by the bug, their love for each other and her desperation to keep him safe could not compete with the urge he felt to help others.
We can see, with stunning clarity, exactly what Parry was putting himself through. At the film’s centre is a heart-stopping, unbroken 10-minute sequence taken from Parry’s body-mounted camera, showing him conducting an evacuation in no man’s land. To the boom of exploding shells, he finds the apartment complex where he’s been told a family are hiding, but their exact location is elusive. Like the protagonist in a dystopian video game, Parry pulls on locked doors and sprints across cratered courtyards. He leaps through holes blown in the side of a building before climbing stairs strewn with rubble and fuel cans. Finally he finds them, cowering in a dark basement, still calling this jagged wasteland home. Several elderly members of the household are loaded into Parry’s car.
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The last revelation is how many such people Parry rescued. In just under a year, with each trip a long and treacherous one, you might assume 50 or 60, 100 perhaps. Actually more than 400 lives were saved by a man who was willing to sacrifice his own: the heedless, endlessly kind Christopher Parry, immortalised now by this frightening but profoundly human film.
Hell Jumper aired on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer