Verzió Documentary Film Critics Workshop

Aspiring critics and writers interested in documentary cinema are invited to apply for the 4th Verzió Documentary Film Critics Workshop, held as part of the 22nd Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. The event will take place from 11–19 November 2025 in Budapest and in cities across Hungary.

Organized in collaboration with the Doc Around Europe festival network, the workshop is designed for early-career and aspiring film critics, journalists, filmmakers, and students from across Europe. Selected participants will engage in a week-long, writing-intensive program with peers and mentors, gaining hands-on experience in film criticism with a focus on human rights and socially engaged documentary cinema.

Participants will receive accreditation to the Verzió Festival, access to industry events, and the chance to network with international filmmakers, critics, and cultural professionals. Accommodation and intra-European travel costs will be reimbursed. The working language is English, and attendance on-site for all sessions is mandatory. Online participation is not available.

The workshop will be led by Steve Rickinson, a Bucharest-based film and media critic with an international background in independent publishing and cultural programming. Rickinson is the industry editor of Modern Times Review and has been active across Europe’s documentary film festival circuit.

Eligible applicants must be based in one of 21 European countries, including Romania, Hungary, Greece, Germany, France, and several Balkan states. There is no application fee; however, selected participants will be asked to pay a €75 enrollment fee to support operational costs.

To apply, candidates must submit a film review or essay in English (or translated to English) via the online application form. The deadline is 31 August 2025, with successful applicants notified by mid-September.

For more information, contact: info@verzio.org.

Joan Gonzalez Turns 70

He texted me yesterday, “watching?”, as he has done dozens of times, when “our” football club FCBarcelona plays. If I am not at the computer here in Denmark, he updates me on how the match goes. I am writing about Joan Gonzalez, the smiling man to the right who turns 70 the second of August. The selfie was taken, when we were together at the Camp Nou on one of many festive occasions on location.

Football is only one of our common passions, let me give you some history:

Joan is a visionary, some will say a dreamer, I will add that many of his dreams have and will come through. Step by Step as his slogan is. When I met him in Granada 25 years ago for the first EDN documentary workshop in Spain, he was one of the participants and made his first documentary pitch. Not very convincing. But he was thrilled about the format, and he took it all to Barcelona, and became the organiser of what is now a very well established international event, DocsBarcelona. At that time he was managing a local tv station and doing a lot of training, which is still very much on his agenda. 

He is definitely a talent scout, his office is full of talented carefully picked young people, who get the injection of documentary enthusiasm from their director.

Joan is a man with high ethical standards, who is not afraid to use the word ”trust”, when he describes, what he wants people to associate with his company. He has lost some battles with his idealistic attitude but he has always come back full of optimism and with new ideas. I sometimes have the impression that when he wakes up in the morning, he has a new project! The latest is “nextus” that aims at making documentaries part of the school curriculum. Not only in Catalunya and Spain.

DocsBarcelona is much more than a festival. I have always been crazy about the initiative “Documentary of the Month”. Overall I would say as it has been written by Joan himself, “the mission is to contribute to society’s cultural enrichment through the audiovisual medium”. As with the “Documentary of the Month” Joan has always thought of ways to reach the audience. I think it (also) comes with his background at the TV3, the local tv station.

My wife and have seen more of Joan and his wife Montse during the last years. They have visited Copenhagen in March for the CPH:DOX and have enjoyed our capital and surroundings, as we have done in Barcelona and in the apartment in Palamos at the coast. Our acquaintance goes back to before their kids were born, Marti and Berta. It has been great to see and hear about them growing up, most often through words conveyed by their proud father.

Looking fwd, to see you and the family again – and to sing Jacques Brel again in your car…

Congratulations!

Sarajevo FF Documentary Competition 2025

Rada Šešić, the programmer of the Competition Programme – Documentary Film, included 20 films in the competition programme; 12 feature-length and 8 short documentary films, four of which will have a world premiere, four international, 10 films will have a regional premiere and two films will have a Bosnian premiere. In addition, one film has been selected for the out-of-competition programme and will have an international premiere.

“Selection inevitably reflects a complex socio-political situation, but also shows the enviable resilience of documentary creativity with the continuous emergence of interesting new authors. More than half of the titles in this year’s programme reflect the need to reconceptualize human relationships as a particularly necessary value. It is interesting that in most films in these gloomy times, or precisely because of this, the authors celebrate the power of love as the strongest driver of life, whether they are family or war stories. What is especially valuable is that even through these seemingly only family stories, we learn a lot about the complex conditions of life in a particular environment,” Šešić said.

Awards:

HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM 
Award in the amount of €4,000, sponsored by the Government of Switzerland

AN OSCAR® QUALIFYING FILM

HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM 
Award in the amount of €2,000

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE 
Award in the amount of €2,500

1. BOSNIAN KNIGHT / BOSANSKI VITEZ, Tarik Hodžić (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, 2025, 79 min.) – World premiere
2. I SAW A ‘SUNO’ / SUNO DIKHLEM, KATALIN BARSONY(Hungary, Belgium, 2025, 92 min.) – World premiere
3. KITE / CHARTAETOS, Thanos Psichogios (Greece, 2025, 15 min.) – World premiere
4. STEEL HOTEL SONG, Bojan Stojčić (Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2025, 19 min.) – World premiere
5. LETTERS / PISMA, Aysel Küçüksu (Bulgaria, 2025, 11 min.) -International premiere
6. MY DAD’S LESSONS / LEKCIJE MOG TATE, Dalija Dozet (Croatia, 2025, 62 min.) – International premiere
7. RED SLIDE / CRVENI TOBOGAN, Nebojša Slijepčević (Croatia, 2025, 27 min.) –  International premiere 
8. THIRD WORLD / TREĆI SVIJET, Arsen Oremović (Croatia, 2025, 101 min.) – International premiere
9. CUBA & ALASKA, Yegor Troyanovsky (Ukraine, France, Belgium, 2025, 93 min.) – Regional premiere
10. DIVIA, Dmytro Hreshko (Ukraine, Poland, The Netherlands, USA, 2025, 79 min.) – Regional premiere
11. DREAMERS: PEOPLE OF THE LIGHT / XƏYALPƏRƏSTLƏR: İŞIĞIN UŞAQLARI, Imam Hasanov (Azerbaijan, 2025, 86 min.) – Regional premiere
12. EVERYTIME YOU LEAVE, YOU ARE BORN AGAIN / SVAKI PUT KAD ODEŠ, PONOVO SE RAĐAŠ, Mladen Bundalo (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgium, 2025, 24 min.) – Regional premiere
13. I BELIEVE THE PORTRAIT SAVED ME / MUA BESOJ MË SHPËTOJ PORTRETI, Alban Muja (Kosovo*, The Netherlands, 2025, 10 min.) – Regional premiere
14. IN HELL WITH IVO, Kristina Nikolova (Bulgaria, USA, 2025, 80 min.) – Regional premiere
15. MILITANTROPOS, Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova, Simon Mozgoviy (Ukraine, Austria, France, 2025, 111 min.) – Regional premiere
16. OUR TIME WILL COME / UNSERE ZEIT WIRD KOMMEN, Ivette Löcker (Austria, 2025, 105 min.) – Regional premiere
17. THE MEN’S LAND / KACEBIS MITSA, Mariam Bakacho Khatchvani (Georgia, Hungary, 2025, 15 min.) – Regional premiere
18. SLET 1988, Marta Popivoda (Serbia, Germany, France, 2025, 22 min.) – Regional premiere
19. 9-MONTH CONTRACT, Ketevan Vashagashvili (Georgia, Bulgaria, Germany, 2025, 77 min.) – B&H premiere
20. TATA, Lina Vdovîi, Radu Ciorniciuc (Romania, Germany, The Netherlands, 2025, 82 min.) – B&H premiere
21. OHO FILM, Damjan Kozole (Slovenia, Croatia, 2025, 93 min.) – International premiere, out of competition

The festival takes place August 15 – 22.

Igor Bezinovic: Fiume o Morte

This film totally blew my mind. Its freshness, its originality, its playfulness, giving information so it’s never dull and using the cinema language wonderfully. Archive – moving images and photos to make history alive, citizens of Rijeka today, all centered around a mad poet Gabriele d’Annunzio…

I have always wanted to visit that area, where Italy and Slovenia and Croatia meet each other, Rijeka is now on my list, indeed! And this film reminds me of what documentaries can do, taking us back in time, from today, in an entertaining manner. In other words it is a great film, why… read the director’s impressive introduction, says a lot:

“By making this film I wanted to get to know the past of my hometown Rijeka/Fiume, but also to get to understand it’s present state from a new perspective. During this process I’ve met hundreds of my fellow citizens who wanted to work on the film in front of the camera or behind it. I’ve met drivers, politicians, dustbin collectors, archivists, doormen, cooks, musicians, professors, translators and waiters who all had ideas about what this film should be like. I’ve also met historians of all kinds, from those who saw D’Annunzio as the crazier version of Mussolini to the ones who saw him as the Italian Che Guevara.
Besides meeting new people I’ve also read thousands and thousands of pages on D’Annunzio in Fiume, and while doing it I was not only gathering facts but was also shaping my own political ideas.
One idea, however, stayed clear to me all the way. That idea is formulated in a political pamphlet published in Fiume in 1922, soon after D’Annunzio’s departure: “Long live Fiume, free and independent from any kind of rescuers, liberators and protectors!”.
I made a film with my fellow citizens and for my fellow citizens, building a chronological story that we’ll be able, I hope, to retell to new generations. I also hope that our film will help the audiences outside of Rijeka think about how much they know about the histories of their own hometowns and about how these histories got remembered and retold.
In his lesser-known essay from 1960, Pier Paolo Pasolini calls D’Annunzio’s occupation of Fiume a “pagliacciata narcisistica”, “a narcissistic escapade”: D’Annunzio saw Fiume as a personal playground, as a place where he could experiment and practice everything that came to his mind.
By making this film I wanted to keep D’Annunzio’s idea of Rijeka/Fiume as a playground, but this time the citizens of Rijeka are the ones who are playing.”

Croatia, Italy, Slovenia, 2024, 113 mins.

Petr Lom & Corinne van Egeraat: The Coriolis Effect

I had a very rich experience watching this film. I was pleasantly surprised of the way it was told. The filmmakers took me by surprise by giving me several layers to dig into.Thank you for that but before I go into sequences and content, read this quote from the site of the film, to give you the content background, the Where and the What:

“Cape Verde is the literal and metaphorical epicenter of our world spinning out of control. It is the place where some of the most powerful hurricanes in the world are born. It’s on these dry and wind-blown islands that the filmmakers find humans and animals alike who tell a universal story of the will to live.

The hurricanes are caused by the Coriolis Effect: the earth’s rotation bends and deflects trade winds running between the islands, turning them into storms. The effect is increased by global warming and the rise of sea temperatures, causing the hurricanes to become more devastating.”

The first surprise comes with the dramatic beginning. No explanation, images of rocks and water, sound of waves clashing against the rocks, and of a wind with an eternal brutal sound, a man with a guitar letting the wind play the instrument (!), a close up of a turtle laying eggs, covering them with sands, some researchers taking notes, it´s so well edited by Gys Zevenberger (a veteran who has been editing for Peter Greenaway, Oeke Hoogendijk and took care of the directors’ last film “I am the River, the River is me”), who lets sequences unfold, lets the amazingly beautiful shots by Petr Lom stand out as they deserve. I am normally hesitating with words like these, but it IS a true visual poem. AND we get back to the man with the guitar, AND, indeed, to the turtles in this place, where it has not rained for five years, as says Vasco Martins, the man with the guitar, who has composed the music for the film. Brilliant work.

There are other charismatic characters like the “turtle doctor”, who also takes care of a bird with a damaged wing, that he has to amputate – it will not be able to fly again but it lives, as he says. The same goes for the turtle that misses a limb, it has been with him for 10 years and he cares about it as if it was a child. Wonderful scenes. And the young men who caries a turtle to the sea, when it was going in the wrong direction, the turtles get confused about where the sea is… The wind again if I got it right.

In between scenes with men and animals, the film gives the necessary information about the coriolis effect but does also leave space for a man telling the adventurous story about he ended up in Brazil without really knowing… 27 days on the ocean.

A sheperd: “If the earth could talk, what would it say… Give me a Drop of Water!”…The drought is shown in many ways like in a scene, where birds are fighting to get close to huge water cans brought in by boats, there could be a drop. Dramatic scenes, again the editing lets the scenes unfold, no hurry, take a look, enjoy, be surprised of the wonders of our planet.

AND THE RAIN CAME, after 5 years, for good and worse, for the latter transporting garbage from the sea that gives a huge problem for the baby turtles; many die, others survive but need help to get out of the garbage, they are being watered and helped in the right direction, to the sea, to their right homes where they belong – excellent underwater shooting by Runar Jarle Stray Wille.

Compared to the story-born “I am the River, the River is me”, the couple’s previous film, this one is a much more free film, playful, fragmented, full of layers, it is obvious that they loved to make it, now they have a man&nature fascinated essay with close up’s shifting with drone shots, main characters being turtles (!), who can be seen as us humans making all we can to have a good life surrounded by the most dramatic weather, you can think of.

And the ending, I won’t spoil it for you, a true crescendo of sound and image, wow!

The Netherlands, Norway, 1hour 50 mins. 2024.

Kovalenko, Andersen, Stefani

And now words about the new photos on top of this site, www.filmkommentaren.dk.

I have mentioned the three by their last name. I could also have chosen to name them by first names:

Alisa, Niels, Eva. That’s how I address them, when we meet at festivals.

They have in common that they make creative documentaries or call it artistic documentaries, where the personal stamp is visible. The kind of films that we have written about on this site. Our priority, simply, since Allan Berg in 2007 called me and asked if we could make a film blog together. Allan died in March 2024 and left more than 1000 texts that are available on the site.

From the right:

EVA STEFANI who became a very good friend of Allan, who adored her way of making films. Eva is Greek, has made films in all durations, a true “auteur”, who refrains from being in the spotlight and has never wished to be on the red carpet. She studied in England, at the National Film School, she is influenced by Direct Cinema, but she has also made films that experiment with the medium, like “Acropolis” that was not liked by the official Greece. 3 of her films have been reviewed on this site: “The Box”, “Days and Nights with Dimitra K.” and “Bull´s Heart” that premiered this year in Thessaloniki.

NIELS PAGH ANDERSEN who is considered to be one of the world’s leading editors of documentaries. A true auteur yes, but also a storyteller. His last name is Andersen like Hans Christian. His book “Order in Chaos” is read and appreciated here, there and everywhere. He has a long filmography of Danish films, the two made with Joshua Oppenheimer, “Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence” stand out, but let me stay with some foreign titles, “Outside” that he made with Ukrainian Olha Zhurba, the many films where he assisted Chinese artist Ai WeiWei, the masterpiece of Pirjo Honkasalo, “Three Rooms of Melancholia”. Niels is a traveler, he has done consultancy, workshops and masterclasses in Calcutta, Togo (!), Jordan and many other places, recently he was in Kyiv for DocuDays.

ALISA KOVALENKO filmmaker and soldier, personal stories, emotional and engaged, and brave when you think about her latest film, “My Dear Théo”, a visual letter to her son, sent from the frontline. The film before, “We will not Fade Away”, introduce with warmth Andriy, Liza, Lera, Ruslan, Illia, who take photos, make music, repair and build motorbikes, plan to be an actor, they have fun as teenagers have and should have… Where are they now, I ask myself, are they soldiers, are they in another country? Alisa also made a fine film “Home Games” about a girl, who likes to play football but also has “a job” at home taking care of her siblings, when her mother dies and the father is an alcoholic.

To the trio: If there is a photo credit to the photo I have chosen, please tell me.

Vytautas Puidokas: Murmuring Hearts

There is a short text at the beginning of the film bringing us to the location: “… a network of rural communities (that) provides shelter to individuals struggling with addiction and mental health issues”.

A former abuser is running the place, where a small group of adult men seeks help to get rid of their alcohol abuse and where Matas, a kid, 14 years old, is placed, away from his mother and other grown-ups in family care. Žanas, the host, sits at the end of the table, when table prayers are held in the morning before it’s time to work – milking the cows, getting them out to the field and into the cow shed, cleaning and again cleaning.

Good intentions but is it a good place for a boy to be with adult men? No, it is not, says the film in its obversational focus on how Matas most of the time is being shouted at by the others, when he is doing something wrong. A farm that should do the best for its “inhabitants” but for Matas, suffering from anger and lack of care, what comes first?, as he says it himself, “the men make my aggression grow”. He starts to act like the men, kicking the animals, shouting at the cows etc. Not nice to watch.

It is a well made documentary, great cinematography of beautiful Lithuanian landscapes, I could have hoped that the director could have gone deeper with one of the adult men or give us Žanas story, but what we get is a strong portrait of a boy with a fate that you can find everywhere; in Denmark there is a constant discussion about private care initiatives, do they work, is the pedagogical and the fundamentals of care present?

Did the film or will the film raise debate? There are other ways of treating Matas, for sure.

At least the film was awarded as the best documentary in Lithuania, the so-called Silver Crane, and as a co-production with France and Norway a basic foreign distribution should be secured.

Lithuania, France, Norway, 2024, 81 mins.

Eva Stefani: Bull’s Heart

I took this from the website of the producer Onassis Culture to have a precise content description of the film:

Filmmaker Eva Stefani follows the preparations behind Transverse Orientation and its tour across theatrical stages in Europe, observing from a close distance Dimitris Papaioannou and his collaborators in their effort to give shape and breathe life into the work. For two years, her camera captured scenes from the rehearsals at the Onassis Stegi during the pandemic, as well as performances in Paris, London, Vilnius, and other international destinations, leading to the last show in San Francisco. The central question that runs through the documentary is “Why do we do what we do?” elevating art as a means of resisting the futility of things and a way to reapply meaning to our own lives.

All right, this is – the last sentence – how the producer presents the cinematic interpretation that Eva Stefani so competent conveys, the work of the charismatic Dimitris Papaioannou, a choreographer of world class, who the director has known since he and she were young, which is probably, why she was asked to make a film about him. Well, and because Eva Stefani is, my view, the best documentary director in her country. Maybe Papaioannou shares my view and asked for her to do the job.

A commissioned work on the process of creation it is, fascinating from start till end, visually stunning, also for someone like me, who knows nothing about dance performances, in this case with references to Greek mythology, but also a portrait of man, who with his art goes for the Transverse Orientation, i.e., I understand, means looking for light, i.e. looking for a sense, a meaning of it all. With Eva Stefani’s adding her predominant theme Love. Her voice, it’s also a film about the director.

Love. Here with extraordinary clearly erotic close ups of scenes from the performance, that has a male ensemble plus the formidable Pina Bausch dancer Breanna O’Mara, whose beauty is caught by Eva Stefani’s camera; The Birth of Venus of Botticelli is just one of the references. But Stefani also includes memories of Papaioannou, who talks about his first falling in love with Peter on the island of Mykonos. They were together for some days, 19 years old was Dimitris, German Peter some years older, and after the few days he left and have never seen each other again. And Stefani lets in Papaioannou’s worry about the health of his father, who has cancer in a final stage. Phone call after phone call.

Eva Stefani calls herself a direct cinema documentarian and indeed you are as a viewer generously invited to follow the preparation of the performance during and after the covid years until the premiere at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris. During the rehearsals on stage, behind the stage, in their hugging and in scenes, where the director gives instructions, inspires the ensemble, in a way that reminds me of another great coach from a different artistic performative genre, football. I am thinking of Pep Guardiola.

The Bull represents of course power, strength, masculinity. The ensemble fights it and in the rehearsals Papaioannou shows a dancer how to decapitate the animal, with gestures and sound – whereas Eva Stefani in one of her many small comments/dialogues with Dimitris Papaioannou teases him saying that she is getting more interested in the bull than in him.

Yes, there is a tone of humor in the film, it is not high brow or elitist, it is also a film that shows how nice the dancers are to each other, the spirit of an ensemble, which can be difficult to keep. Papaioannou, in a scene, stresses that they have to repeat and repeat the movements, the dynamic, the rythm, unbelievable that they are able to, also when you think about the empty theatre rehearsals during the covid period.

Papaioannou paints with the bodies in the performance, Stefani with her camera. Does she ever get to the Bull’s Heart. If you choose to see this as the meaning of it all, of course not, the transverse orientation is about the search for light like the insects, and the film does not want to give any answers, documentaries raise questions, they never give answers. Stefani breaks up the straight forward chronological structure by dividing scenes into dreams, a clever choice that adds spirituality to her direct cinema approach. Convincing.

If she gets to the Bull’s Heart, if she provides order in chaos… I don’t know and I don’t need to know, I let myself enjoy, what I see and what I hear.

Eva Stefani gets the final words with notes taken from the website of the producer:

The documentary begins by capturing a group of dancers and technicians who find themselves in the weird position of having to work on a show that might never take place. At the same time, it serves as a portrait of an artist who possesses the ability to instill inspiration in his collaborators and captivate his audience with works imbued with ache, emotion, and beauty. We shot the documentary with a very tight crew, just two or three people, using the direct cinema approach to remain as unobtrusive as possible. We experimented extensively with the image itself, particularly out-of-focus shots, which we believed accurately captured the eerie vibe we felt while watching the performance. My objective with this documentary was to depict, to some degree, what it’s like to watch “Transverse Orientation,” its sensuality, darkness, and riddle. Beyond that, to leave subtle cracks that offer a glimpse into the intricate psyche of a truly brilliant artist.

Photo: Julian Mommert.

Greece, 2025, 78 mins.

Yegor Troyanovsky: Cuba & Alaska

At numerous workshops in Eastern Europe I have told filmmakers from that part of the world that to call all characters or protagonists “heroes” is not a good idea – as in English they are people, who have done something extraordinary, outstanding, with courage, people who deserves admiration. I have just finished my armchair watching of a film with protagonists, who are heroes in the best sense of the word.

And who simply are the best film protagonists, you could wish for: Oleksandra Lysytska (“Alaska”) and Yuliia Sidorova (“Cuba”), who fill the film with their unique personalities. Close friends, both working as combat medics on the front line, experiencing what war is, when it is most brutal and deadly and at the same time spreading good atmosphere within the male teams they are part of. Cuba is in most parts of the film laughing her way through life, caring, and so much more, when Alaska gets seriously injured and end up in a wheelchair for some time followed by hard rehab; she has to learn to walk again. She draws, whereas Cuba is a talented fashion designer and the film follows her to a show in Paris – and from there to Alicante, where her mother lives with their dog. By the way, Cuba reminds me so much of Apolonia from the film with the same name by Lea Glob. A powerhouse of energy and passion.

It’s a roller coaster of a film full of strong emotional human scenes from the front line and from the medic cars, where you are invited to follow the professional work of Cuba, when she is trying to save lives or “at least” limbs of wounded soldiers.

I found myself shouting at the screen, using words used pretty often in the film, motherfuckers and bastards, it makes you angry, an understatement, but sometimes, with tears in eyes, it is unbearable to watch. But the two women’s hunger for Life, their dedication to their jobs that they have been performing since 2014, their friendship and all the funny situations with Cuba laughing and Alaska’s dry humor, make this film viewer go through good and bad emotions on behalf of women fighting for a free country. It has to be said that there are wonderful male characters as well, like Artist and Baldhead and Sreba. The latter comes to play an important role in the film.

The film is a big international coproduction, part of the Ukrainian documentary slate within Arte. Meaning that also this UA documentary will reach a big audience outside the festivals, where it is touring right now. Tomorrow it will be in Munich.

Photo credit: Yegor Troyanovsky, who is now in the army.

Ukraine and many other countries, 2025, 93 mins.

Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz: Shards of Light

Take a look at the photo/still from the film from Bucha, the city that experienced, what has been called a massacre, where Russian crimes against humanity took place in February 2022. Documented it is by several sources. Including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Maxim and Anya, on the photo, are a couple of the protagonists in the film that Teshaieva and Lenz have followed during the three years after the massacre. We see them being married, he in his soldier’s uniform, saluted by soldiers and civilians. On the photo they talk about what clothes he should bring along to the front. Through the film we meet Anya alone, she does not get contact with her husband, she talks with other women about the wounds they have after 2022, the waiting.

They are accompanied by other civilians, like Liudmyla, whose husband was shot at close range and whose house was bombed – and is being rebuild but it takes time. We see, an emotional scene like many in this well made film, her cleaning window frames in the re-built house that is still a skeleton. Liudmyla talks to a lawyer, who is there to identify the killer of her husband. Why are we treating them so civilized, she says, they should go through what we have, torture etc. Referring to the Ukrainians collecting material for raising court cases against the Russians…

And there is Taras who stayed in Bucha, while his family is safe in France. He is preparing the house for them to be welcomed home… if they come back, it looks great. The kids speak more French now than Ukrainian, he says, and it is hard for him – and for us viewers – to witness him saying Happy Birthday on “Face Time” to one of the daughters. 7 years birthday.

And Olga who has been accused of being a traitor during the Russian occupation, giving information to the Russians. In the film we see her being tested in a lie detector situation. Did you help the Russians, she is asked. No, she says.

In an interview – from the press material – with the director Teshaieva, she talks about Olga and Maxim and Anya:

“For each of the protagonists, it’s their own path. Some, for instance, devoted themselves to the fight
for justice. That became the meaning of their lives for years, unfortunately, without results. Take Olga: during Bucha’s liberation, she was saving people – she truly was a hero. But
then, for three years, she had to defend herself against accusations of something she
hadn’t done – to prove she wasn’t a collaborator…

And that was nearly impossible, because she had been accused “just in case.” Each of our protagonists embarked on a new, unknown, painful journey. And it was important for me to be with them along that road.

For example, Maksym and Anya. In April 2022, when they got married, they were euphoric. He had defended Irpin, and they believed in a quick victory. But when he came back from the frontline in 2024, he was really broken. Reality had changed. And no one was prepared for that. This film is important to me, particularly because through it, I can speak about this new reality: the reality of war, and their attempt to navigate in this uncertain reality. Through them, through their fates…”.

Not to forget the young people in the film doing a theatre play about… the war. Today. After Bucha was taken by the Russians, and liberated by the Ukrainians, leaving traumas and nightmares behind. Laughter and pain for the young ones, one of them in online contact with the Russian, who killed his father. Amazing scene.

The filmmakers built up a close relationship to the protagonists, you can see and sense that. Scenes and sequences are strong and full of respect. When Liudmyla looks for her husband’s name on the memorial of the massacre, the camera stays at a distance. Thank you.

Germany, Ukraine, 2025, 83 mins.