Porcelain War – Brendan Bellomo, Slava Leontyev, Aniela Sidorska and Paula DuPre’ Pesmen
Two first names are the directors followed by the producers.
I was in the multiplex cinema Palads in Copenhagen last night. The owner Nordisk Film showed the Ukrainian Oscar nominee in the documentary section, “Porcelain War”, in collaboration with Ukraine House in Denmark. The majority of the audience, I guess, were Ukrainians living in Copenhagen – where were the Danish filmmakers…?
Anyway, fine film, warm in atmosphere when we were following the protagonists, three artists; two of them making ceramics with inspiration from nature and third one a painter. Beautiful images, many drone shots of nature – again and again interrupted by sequences from the Russian full scale invasion and its consequences, bombings, corpses on the roads, we have seen it before, unfortunately, in the three years the war has been part of the Ukrainian daily life. Sound of sirens every day but Anya continues to do her ceramic art, most often they are amazing colored snails, who for the film have small animation parts of animals and people on the sculptures. Creativity!
I think the filmmakers should have refrained from the effect sound to the war images, on the other hand the music is fantastic, first of all the songs performed by the quartet DakhaBrakha, whose voices we hear and who are in the picture, while the credits are rolling at the end of the film. Their music for the film is published.
“Porcelain War” is one the five Oscar nominated, I saw four of them, the winner you will know Monday morning, if you live in Denmark.
Ukraine and other countries, 2024, 87 mins.
