A City Creating Itself
Marc Wilkins on Kyiv’s Unique Path
Film maker
Coming from Switzerland, what led you to choose Kyiv, and why did it resonate so deeply?
Besides being a privileged citizen of Switzerland, I am also a resident of Kyiv — the home of my heart. I feel more alive and fulfilled in Ukraine, in an environment that is developing and transforming. Switzerland is fantastic politically, socially, and culturally, but it is a ready-made society. New York, where I lived when I fell in love with Kyiv, and Berlin, where I also lived, are much the same — everything is in place.
Kyiv, by contrast, is in an exciting moment of transformation, a “history in the making” momentum that fuels me as a creative person.
Many of my friends were at the barricades during the Maidan Revolution in 2014, fighting for democracy, freedom, and European values, while I was in New York, where life felt static. I was so inspired that I moved to Kyiv and found the home of my heart.
Kyiv is often compared to Berlin, yet you’ve said its transformation relies solely on its own people. How do you see that difference today?
The war has only reinforced my view. Ukrainians — and Kyiv’s people in particular — are incredibly resilient and create from within themselves.
Many here were proud of the “Kyiv is the new Berlin” comparison, but it’s flawed. East Berlin, though also shaped by the Soviet regime, received massive Western support and funding, along with imported ideas. The new and fresh space created by the fall of the Berlin Wall was quickly filled by the West and old concepts.
Luckily, Ukraine’s path was quite different. There was a brief desire to copy Western cultural models, but this ended with the Maidan Revolution, when Ukraine’s creative class began finding its own words and developing its own “handwriting.” Inspired by the West but shaped from within, the revolution was a Feuertaufe — a baptism of fire — that gave rise to a distinct, individual voice free from outside influence. In contrast to Berlin, Kyiv grew from the inside on a shoestring budget — and even today, bank loans here rarely come below 12–15% interest.
