war

Olga Chernykh originally wanted to make a portrait of her mother. However, in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine again and everything fell apart. The director's three-generation kaleidoscope of memories is an attempt to find a foothold in the face of an uncertain future. Her video interviews with her mother and grandmother are interspersed with photographs and films from the family archive and reportage images of contemporary everyday Ukrainian life. Above all, a sense of longing and loss permeates the collage of past and present stories of three women and one country. At the same time, it speaks of the courage and defiance of a nation that has repeatedly faced external pressure.“We worked a lot on the balance of the portrait of the country and the history of this city and immersing it inside a family story because we did not want to have a historical film.”Quote source: Variety

One of the qualities that is most ingrained in Eastern European culture is hospitality. Welcoming the guest, setting the table and making sure they return home full and satisfied. But what if a guest has dropped in uninvited and their hunger cannot be satisfied, no matter how hard we try? Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Tania Licheuskaya has been recording the first events at the Luninets air base in Belarus, and the black soup she cooks for uninvited guests from the neighbouring country becomes a symbol of resistance.“He breaks into your home without knocking, he is hungry and hopes you will feed him. He has always been hungry, and he likes to expand the boundaries of his appetite. This hunger has a dark history of liberation wars, peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations.”

During the first wave of Covid-19, four young Ukrainian filmmakers retreat to the countryside to work on their artistic projects. Where they were looking for peace and escape from pandemic restrictions, they end up finding much more. The film diary, in which the director's voice speaks to the overman within, becomes not only a record of creative development and search, but also a description of the painful journey to the knowledge of one's inner self. The separation does not only refer to the spatial and relational distance between individuals, but can also be understood in the coordinates of the separation of individual layers of the personality in the process of self-observation.“Separation is a natural process of destruction, which exposes a person, leaving them alone with themselves.”Source: IMDb

Footage of the everyday life of an ordinary Ukrainian family from the city of Svitlodarsk in the Donetsk region shows a life marred by the Russian occupation, where martial law has become the norm. The picture contrasts children's games, doing homework and having dinner in front of the TV with the panorama of the bombed-out buildings of a ghost town.“In war and the army, the worst thing is deathly silence. When there is silence, something is going to happen.”

Vitaly, a nuclear physicist and record holder in extreme cold-exposure training, makes his living as a bricklayer and lives below the poverty line. While his parents, prominent scientists, reminisce about the glory of the regime they willingly built, the avowed patriot from Novosibirsk is gradually changing his mind about Putin's Russia. He rejects its capitalist nature and continues, as a radicalised blogger, to advocate the establishment of a juster regime. This intergenerational clash is typical of the countries of the former Soviet Bloc. While the older generation remembers the certainties and advantages of the past regime, the younger one is hopelessly mired in a crisis of authority, rejecting past and present political representation and resorting to extreme views. Like everything else in his life, Vitaly is experiencing his political awakening in an extreme way as the son of elites relegated to the social periphery after the collapse of the empire. This time-lapse character study, filmed between 2016 and 2024, depicts how long-term frustration and disillusionment lead entire generations and social classes to gravitate towards radical solutions and vote for authoritarian leaders like Putin, Trump or Le Pen. “I'm not afraid of a coup; I'm looking forward to it. Any change will be for the better, because it can't get any worse.” 

When Russian missiles started flying over their heads, the film director packed a few essentials and left the immediate danger area to visit her aging parents, who live farther inland. But the war soon caught up with her there as well. This documentary diary of the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine brings to life the immediate reactions of ordinary people to the horrors unfolding in their neighbourhood. As the conflict escalates, so does the tension in the home, which is gradually stripped of basic certainties such as electricity and heat. But leaving home is not easy. And who would take care of all those cats and dogs if people leave?“Stories about families jammed into one house always turn out badly, but these three are even more isolated. There is no one around, people are leaving, and everyday conversations turn into bitter fights all too quickly.”Quote source: Cineuropa

Not far from the Estonian border is the Russian town of Pechory. When it was occupied by the Estonian army after World War I, a Danish cameraman came along with the soldiers. The director's great-grandmother appears to be in the footage. This formally playful film uses archival footage and animation to tell the moving life story of this courageous woman.

In the middle of the Utah desert, near the Skull Valley Indian Reservation, is a heavily guarded military base where the U.S. military has been developing and testing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons since World War II. It was here that the pilots who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima were trained. Anyone working at the military facility is bound by confidentiality. Nevertheless, the filmmakers piece together a complex picture of the high price the United States pays for wars that take place thousands of miles away, yet are painfully etched into the American landscape and mentality.“There is no one reality, especially not in documentary film. Our film is more a reflection on the costs of war and human existence.” — Michael David BeamishQuote source: der Freitag

The Bosnian town of Velika Kladuša is located near the Croatian border. Its inhabitants often come into contact with refugees from the Middle East and other even more distant places. Day and night, the camera observes the local forests and streets, capturing unbiasedly the clearing of civil war-era explosives, school lessons and collective efforts to face the consequences of the current conflicts. The layered soundtrack and the deliberate rhythm of the narrative, subordinate to the changing seasons, contribute to a slowly absorbing atmosphere of a place where past and present traumas collide alongside different cultures.“With my stubborn approach as a filmmaker, I wanted to grapple with this spot on earth, this spot of World Soul. Perhaps I‘d call it an attempt to ‘capture a floating truth’.” — Nicole Vögele Quote source: European Film Academy