B&H Film Distribution has released the trailer for ‘Killhouse’, directed by Liubomyr Levytskyi (‘Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors’, ‘We Were Recruits’). The film is being described as the first Ukrainian tactical action film, starring active-duty Ukrainian soldiers, including fighters from the Security Service of Ukraine, the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine, and the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade
The film is based on a real-life story of Ukrainian soldiers rescuing civilians using a drone — an operation carried out in the summer of 2022 during the fighting near Izium by fighters of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade Kholodnyi Yar.
In ‘Killhouse’, the story follows a renowned American journalist who finds himself at the center of a rescue operation carried out by a special unit of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine. The mission aims to extract a wounded married couple from an intersection in occupied territory after their car comes under enemy fire. However, it later emerges that the journalist’s 14-year-old daughter has been taken hostage by russian forces, who demand her exchange for the man himself.
‘The journalist, who until recently had been an observer of events taking place in Ukraine, quickly becomes their protagonist. The russians demand that he be exchanged for the girl, and the operation gains worldwide publicity with the participation of U.S. intelligence services, turning into a desperate struggle for life’, the synopsis reads.
During the filming of ‘Killhouse’, the production used real FPV drones — described by the film’s team as a first-of-its-kind precedent in global narrative cinema — as well as actual armored vehicles, weapons, Black Hawk helicopters, and the same communication equipment used by Ukrainian forces on the battlefield today.
‘We didn’t imitate war. We showed what it really looks like — people doing their jobs as mines explode nearby. An industry that is changing the course of the war’, director Liubomyr Levytskyi says.
The film will premiere in Ukrainian cinemas on January 26, 2026.
