Klondike: Donbas 2014

The so-called “Russian Separatists” who terrorized Donbass Ukrainians really weren’t separatists. They wanted to become a Russian vassal territory. In 2014, Russian-backed “separatists” used Russian-supplied arms to shootdown Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 from territory completely controlled by Russia. Yet, Putin’s regime never faced any serious consequences. What kind of behavior did that incentivize? We’re seeing it now. Donbas was seeing then, even including a local Russian sympathizer, who suffers like Job from his allies and the wrath of his Ukrainian-loyalist wife in director-screenwriter-editor Maryna Er Gorbach’s Klondike, which has a special screening tonight at Anthology Film Archives.

Russia and its “separatists” tried to deny responsibility for MH17, but they had already claimed responsibility, thinking it was a Ukrainian troop transport. Tolik ought to be able to empathize with the grieving families, because the itchy-trigger-fingered Russian mercenaries also blew off the front wall of his house. His wife Irka is less understanding. Not only is she Ukrainian, but she is also 7-months-pregnant—and now literally living in rubble. Tolik wants to take her somewhere safer, but his neighbor, Sanya, a local fixer for the Russian mercs, “borrowed” his car.

Tolik’s marriage might be strained, but his relationship with his Ukrainian-loyalist brother-in-law Yaryk practically constitutes a cold war. Both are pigheaded and passive-aggressive in ways that   do Irka no favors. Yet, it is hard for outsiders to see why her husband shifted his loyalties to the rogue separatists. They regularly hold him at gun-point, stole his car, bombed his house, and then demand he kill his cow to feed them. To paraphrase The Producers, where did the separatists “go right?”

Indeed, that absurdity is at the heart of Klondike. The title itself might baffle initially, but it is a veiled reference to the scavenging of luggage—a gold rush—that commences after Flight MH17 crashes near Tolik’s farmhouse. There is much of Samuel Beckett and a lot of The Honeymooners in the three main characters, but it will be lost on many people, because the wartime circumstances are so grim.

Er Gorbach’s approach is also art-house all the way, which will further serve to keep some viewers at arm’s length. Yet, there is often a chilling point to her quiet, long-takes, which often reveal ominous movement on the far horizon. Make no mistake, her shots are composed, in close artistic collaboration with cinematographer Svytoslav Bulakovskiy. The fearful truth is that whatever you see in the distant background will inevitably arrive in the foreground—almost surely portending bad things.

CIFF ’25: My Dear Theo

Russia has deliberately targeted Ukrainian artists and filmmakers, like Oleg Sentsov, but maybe that strategy backfired in the case of filmmaker Alisa Kovalenko. After the Russians arrested, interrogated, and detained Kovalenko while she was filming the illegal Donbas invasion in 2014, she resolved to enlist and defend her country if Putin were to invade the rest of Ukraine, which he did. At that point, considered herself a soldier rather than a filmmaker, but she inadvertently made a film anyway, thanks to her video diaries and video letters to her son. Ultimately, she incorporated that footage into her latest documentary. Their separation is difficult for her as a mother, but she fights for his future, as she explains in her documentary, My Dear Theo, which screens this Friday at the 2025 Camden International Film Festival.

In a way, this film started back in 2014, just like the war, but everyone outside of Ukraine simply hoped it would go away if they ignored it. Of course, that only made things worse. Through family connections, her husband took Theo and his mother to safety in France, leaving Kovalenko to fight—but that is exactly what she wanted.

Initially, Kovalenko and her comrades are on the march outside Kharkiv—until they suddenly stop. Clearly, her unit is accustomed to the constant shelling. There certainly seems to be good chemistry between them all, which makes the final rollcall of the fallen soldiers seen in the film such a slap in the face.

Kovalenko incorporates some battle scenes, but it really isn’t an embedded combat documentary like 2,000 Meters to Andriivka. This is a very personal statement from Kovalenko that often eloquently explains why she took up to defend her country. Sometimes, the extremely personal POV limits its effectiveness as a film to rally global public opinion. Nevertheless, it starkly establishes the stakes for Kovalenko and her fellow soldiers.

Checkpoint Zoo: Putin’s War on Animals

It was like Dunkirk for animals. There were 5,000 beasts, of nearly every variety, at the Ferman Ecopark, all of whom had to be evacuated after Putin’s invasion. Nobody was prepared to pack up their own lives and flee, but transporting the zoo’s entire population would even more challenging. Yet, finding a place to take them all would be even trickier. The resulting rescue mission was a logistical nightmare and a humanitarian imperative the surviving ecopark employees revisit in Joshua Zeman’s documentary, Checkpoint Zoo, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Initially, Oleksandr Feldman thought the ecopark’s location outside Kharkiv, near the Russian border, was a perfect location. That was before Putin launched his war. Conceived as a combination wildlife shelter, zoo, animal rehabilitation center (both wild and domestic), and therapy animal clinic, the ecopark was home for wide variety of species. Unfortunately, it landed right in the middle of no man’s land during the Battle of Kharkiv, just beyond the final Ukrainian government checkpoint (hence the title), where it endured artillery barrages from both side that fell short.

It was several days before staffers could return to feed and water the animals, but some habitats remained too dangerous to reach. The animals grew hungrier, which made the predators dangerous.

Anyone with an ounce of compassion for God’s creatures will be deeply disturbed and angered by animal suffering documented in Checkpoint. The sight of the emaciated and trembling moose is especially shocking. However, it is important to remember there is only one man to blame for their condition: Vladimir Putin.

Indeed, the film makes this point several times, even when the starving and terrified big cats lash out at their frustrated care-givers. Of course, the Russians did their best to make a bad situation worse, launching mortars at the ecopark whenever their drones spotted multiple vehicles at the Feldman facilities. Zeman and the sound design team also viscerally convey a sense of how the sounds of war terrify and disorient the animals, because of their heightened auditory senses.

Mstyslav Chernov’s 2,000 Meters to Andriivka

The tiny Ukrainian village of Andriivka went from obscurity to tragic notoriety in ways much like the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. For months, Ukrainian forces fought literally centimeter by centimeter to liberate the village from its Russian occupiers, only to fall back when the counter-offensive stalled. After documenting the shocking carnage of Russia’s scorched earth tactics targeting Ukrainian civilians in 20 Days in Mariupol, director-producer-cinematographer Mstyslav Chernov embedded with the Ukrainian defense forces to capture the battlefield conditions they endure in 2,000 Meters to Andriivka, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Before Putin’s illegal invasion, Andriivka was a town of no particular importance, unless you lived there. However, during the Ukrainian counter-offensive, it occupied a location strategically close to Russian supply lines. Of course, safely reaching the village was truly an ordeal. Surrounded by bombed-out wasteland, Ukrainian forces had to traverse a narrow strip of surviving forest that had been mined and fortified with fox-holes.

Many offensives had already failed when Mstyslav and his colleague co-producer-co-cinematographer Alex Babenko tag-along with the latest push. Consequently, everybody understands the punishing nature of the fighting they face. As the Ukrainians haltingly progress, Mstyslav and Babenko mark their progress: 100 meters, 200 meters and so on. It is slow going, made even more frustrating by some of Mstyslav’s editorial choices.

Chillingly, Mstyslav has a habit of rather announcing the fatal ends met (in subsequent battles) by the Ukrainian soldiers he interviews at considerable length, usually towards the end of their very personal and dramatic segments. Frankly, many in the Ukrainian military tried to dissuade them reporting on the front line—with good reason.

Although Mstyslav and Babenko certainly document the Russians’ brutal tactics, the film itself often feels demotivating. Whether intentional or not, it emphasizes the futility of the sacrifices made during the bloody assaults on Andriivka. While never pro-Putin, the messaging is decidedly mixed, which makes its release this week rather ironic, considering it comes at a time when Trump and his many of his loyalists are finally turning against Russia and endorsing support for Ukraine.

Indeed, if you can force a MAGA friend to watch one Ukraine documentary, make it Mstyslav’s previous 20 Days, which will reinforce their disgust with Putin’s bloodlust, rather than 2,000 Meters, which could lend credence to their belief Ukraine simply cannot win in the long run.

Bernard-Henri Levy’s Our War

Bernard-Henri Levy has a Ukrainian artillery position named in his honor—and he couldn’t be more proud. Probably no other philosopher has spent as much time in war-zones, thanks to his documentaries covering the Ukrainians struggling to repel Russian invaders and the Kurds’ battle against ISIS. Frankly, Levy has seen more of the Ukrainian front lines than most senior Russian officers, partly because Ukraine keeps inviting him back and partly because Russian officers keep getting killed in action. Yet, the media and politicians insist Ukraine cannot win. Levy examines the boots-on-the-ground realities of Ukrainian morale and battle-worthiness in his Our War, which opens today in New York.

Even wearing a flak jacket, you can immediately recognize Levy as he tours the Ukrainian forces in the field. That why it is so gutsy that he returns so often. At this point, he is on a first-name basis with Zelensky and has long-term relationships with several senior commanders. He also meets many enlisted men and junior officers, like Oksana Rubaniak, who also happens to be a poet, much like her late boyfriend, another fallen soldier. Touched by their stories and their verse, Levy promises to publish them both in France.

Throughout the documentary, Levy and his crew hear plenty of shells landing nearby and sometimes even whizzing past them. He also documents some of the destruction wrought be Putin’s scorched earth tactics. The images are shocking and appalling, but they can’t equal the visceral horrors of Mstslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol, but few films can.

Unfortunately, there is an awkward co-star. That would be our current President, whose bizarre Oval Office meeting with Zelensky happened during filming. It leaves a bitter taste that Macron’s administration is seen as a bigger advocate of freedom. Yet, the truth is Biden talked a better game, but he never really walked the walk either.

Yet, that scene directly into Levy’s titular thesis. He repeatedly argues that Ukraine is fighting the war now, so the rest of Europe (and even the U.S.) won’t have to fight it later. It is not just his interpretation. Russian officials like Dmitry Medvedev say the same thing, but more abrasively, on Russian national television.

Levy also forcefully contradicts conventional wisdom. Interview after interview attests to an undiminished resolve, both among the Ukrainian miliary and civilians. Yes, they could use more and better arms and supplies. At one point, Levy counts twenty Russian mortars for every Ukrainian response. However, the Ukrainians make the most of what they have. Those who nauseatingly use the term “forever war” to advocate abandoning Ukraine need to understand Putin started this “forever” war and it will only end when he withdraws. Until then, Ukrainian patriots will continue to defend their homeland, even if Trump or Lula ask them surrender.

That comes through loud and clear throughout Levy’s latest film. Highly recommended as a timely reality check regarding the state of Putin’s illegal war, Our War opens today (6/11) at the Quad.

ND/NF ’25: Timestamp

In retrospect, schools were clearly closed for far too long during the Covid era. Kids need school for both education and socialization. That is why Ukraine has labored and sacrificed to keep schools open during Putin’s war. Education continues, but the impact of the war is inescapable in Kateryna Gornostai’s documentary, Timestamp (dedicated to her fallen brother), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

As one graduation speaker observes, this year’s graduating class lived out their student years almost entirely during wartime conditions, if we count the 2014 Donbas invasion. Obviously, things got even worse in 2022. Yet, Gornostai documents several graduations, only one of which was sadly virtual, because the school’s home city had been completely razed to the ground by Putin’s military.

Somehow, in-person schooling continues, but the experience is much different from what American viewers might remember. Elementary school children now receive regular instruction on how to identify and report booby-trapped toys left on the streets to maim them. Older secondary students learn how to tie-off torniquets, which involve the titular “timestamp.” Even the coursework for advanced architecture and engineering students has adapted to the times, because all new structures now incorporate some kind of bomb shelter.

Not surprisingly, instruction is often interrupted by air raid sirens. Even the national standardized test for university admissions now makes allowances for wartime disruptions. Altogether, it is a sad, bitterly cruel state of affairs. Admittedly, some younger children appear somewhat traumatized, but Ukrainian students in general exhibit an inspiring resiliency.

Soldiers of Song

Presumably, Putin and his trolls would say Ukraine’s music would be no match for Russia’s advanced weaponry. Yet, here we are, going into 1,107^th day of Putin’s 2-day war. We have also seen Ukrainian farmers carting off the wreckage of Russian tanks on their tractors. Meanwhile, Russia cannot shut up Ukraine’s defiant musicians. Ryan Smith documents the role Ukrainian musicians play both within the military and on the homefront in Soldiers of Song, a documentary supported by the Governor George Pataki Leadership Center, which releases today on VOD.

Think of it as “soft power” that turned hard as a diamond. When Putin launched his illegal invasion, Ukraine’s musicians were just as shocked as the rest of the world, but they found their talent could bolster spirits in bomb-shelter and on the streets (when not under artillery barrages). Soon, the Ukrainian military formed special musician’s units to maintain morale. Do not even consider accusing them of wokeism. The American military has many special active duty bands, many of which have histories dating back decades or even centuries. Remember the Spirit of ’76 is literally a fife and drum trio.

The Ukrainian musical morale-boosters take on many different roles. Some are enlisted, while others, like Svitlana Tarabarova perform in USO-like battlefield tours. The music also varies considerably. Tarabarova is sort of a Ukrainian Taylor Swift, who used to perform relationship-themed singer-songwriter-style pop. However, her music has recently taken a more serious turn (for obvious reasons). In contrast, Slava Vakarchuk and the band Okean Elzy rock hard, but can also go acoustic (they no longer tour Russia, where they built a substantial fanbase, again for obvious reasons).

Tragically, the war came to Vasyl Kryachok, artistic director of the Mariupol Chamber Philharmonic, when Russia dropped a bomb on the Mariupol Theater, while 1,200 fellow musicians, staff members, artists, and their families were sheltering in its basement. He is currently in-residence with the Kyiv Chamber Orchestra, yet again, for obvious reasons.

Perhaps the most personal and dramatic story is that of Sergiy Ivanchuk, an opera singer in training, happened to be evacuating a clinic when he was sprayed with five bullets, one of which was perilously near his spine. Fortunately, one of the doctors patched him up enough to save his lung. Nevertheless, his recovery, including a return to performances, is almost miraculous.

Kyiv Theater: An Island of Hope, OVID.tv

According to the actors based in Kyiv, Ukrainian theater overwhelmingly reflected a Russian influence, until Putin’s illegal invasion. Since then, they have increasingly looked towards the European avant-garde for inspiration. Of course, Putin does not care about culture, but it is another example of Russia’s loss of international prestige. French theater director Ariane Mnouchkine is exactly the sort of artist the Ukrainian theater world has been drawn to. To show her solidarity, Mnouchkine travels to Kviv to hold an intensive workshop, which Duccio Bellugi-Vannuccini & Thomas Briat documented in Kyiv Theater: An Island of Hope, premiering tomorrow on OVID.tv.

Throughout her residency, Mnouchkine heard drone raid sirens nearly every night, but fortunately, she never witnessed catastrophic-level destruction. Nevertheless, her traveling company staff fully understood that was a very real possibility, but they joined her anyway. Yet, throughout the workshop, both the Ukrainian and French participants deliberately avoided explicit political subjects and references. The Ukrainians had already had more than their fill.

Instead, we watch numerous improvisation exercises that often resemble out-takes from Samuel Beckett plays. Frankly, these very theatric theatrical performances are the least interesting parts of Vannuccini & Briat’s doc, but they get a majority of the screentime, in a film that clocks in a whisker shy of an hour.

Porcelain War: Ukrainian Artists Documenting Their Resistance

Slava Leontyev is an enemy of Putin’s blood-thirsty Z thugs in two ways. He is a soldier defending his Ukrainian homeland against an Imperialistic invasion and an artist preserving Ukrainian art against a cultural genocide. Collaborating with his wife, he has created remarkable porcelain figurines. Working for the first time as a filmmaker, he now documents the atrocities of Putin’s war as they happen in Porcelain War, co-directed by Brendan Bellomo & Leontyev, which is now playing in New York.

The art Leontyev makes with his childhood friend, art school classmate, and life-partner Anya Stasenko combines Ukrainian tradition with their own whimsical sensibilities. Figurines like their dragonlings are ornately decorated, but their shapes and expressions are quite appealing, even cute. Not surprisingly, their figurines have become moral boosting mascots for Leontyev’s “Saigon” Unit, who specialize in dangerous missions in compromised territory.

Porcelain also serves as a rather clever national metaphor for Leontyev and Stasenko. As a material, it easily breaks, but can withstand extreme heat and easily restores if it is buried for centuries. The aptness of the comparison to Ukraine is obvious, especially as we watch the Saigon Unit taking fire, as the fight their way towards wounded infantrymen needing medical assistance.

The third focal artist is Andrey Stefano, the couple’s closest friend. Until Putin’s unprovoked invasion, Stefano worked as a painter, but he shifted his focused to filmmaking to document the horrific events unfolding around him. Almost all the footage was filmed by the primaries, but Stefano has the sole cinematographer credit. Obviously, he too understands art’s role as a method of resistance and bearing witness. Yet, his primary concern is always his two daughters, whom he managed to safely shuttle out of the country.

In the Rearview [Mirror]

Polish director Maciek Hamela followed the example of Jafar Panahi, helming his latest film from the driver’s seat. Panahi had to operate undercover making Taxi, because the Iranian regime banned him from filmmaking. In contrast, Hamela voluntarily took the wheel to shuttle Ukrainians to safety in Poland. Not merely a driver, Hamela documents average Ukrainians’ oral history of Putin’s illegal invasion throughout In the Rearview, which releases today on VOD.

Together with his cameraman riding shotgun, Hamela ferries a constant stream of families, seniors, students, and a few cats across the Polish border. Thanks to his Russian fluency, he is unusually well-qualified for the job, which frequently requires Hamela to talk his way through checkpoints.

It quickly becomes clear a generation of Ukrainian children have been deeply traumatized by the invasion. Families have been fractured, trapped in different shelters, unable to contact each other for long stretches of time—if they are lucky. Of course, many of Hamela’s passengers have lost loved ones.

Hamela’s film might also explain why the DRC is one of the few African nations that have spoken out against Putin’s war. It turns out Hamela’s minivan sometimes doubles as an official ambulance, as when he delivers a gravely injured woman from Kinshasa to a Polish hospital better equipped to treat her. According to his patient-passenger, Russian troops opened fire on her and a group of fellow Congolese students, even though they obviously did not look Ukrainian. Nevertheless, they were still potential witnesses to Russian crimes against humanity.

The Rule of Two Walls: Documenting Artists in Ukraine

If you think all Millennials and Gen Z’ers are annoying, you haven’t met Ukrainian Millennials and Gen Z’ers. There is nothing frivolous about them and none of them have time to whine about micro-aggressions. They are too busy worrying about the exploding macro-aggressions Russia keeps launching at them. Ukrainian-American filmmaker David Gutnik captures the lives of Ukrainian artists working under Russian bombardment, several of whom also served as crew on the documentary in which they are subjects, The Rule of Two Walls. It opens this Friday in New York.

Although Rule of Two Walls is not nearly as harrowing and horrific as Mstyslav Chernov’s extraordinarily important 20 Days in Mariupol, you will still see bodies burned to a crisp by Putin bombing campaign. To put it more precisely, Gutnik is compelled to record the brave Ukrainian journalists who are compelled to record the truth of this particular war crime.

For most of the film, Gutnik turns his lens on Ukrainian filmmakers, hardcore metal musicians, painters, and gallerists. Ordinarily, they would be the hippest of the hippest. However, since Putin’s full invasion, they have consciously embraced traditional Ukrainian culture as another form of deliberate resistance.

That even includes Ukrainian religious traditions, even though some still cannot quite call themselves believers. Regardless, the agnostic have always been the minority in the devoutly Christian nation. In fact, Gutnik records a tellingly ironic riff on the old adage about “no atheists in fox-holes.” Would an atheist even be in a fox-hole in the first place they wonder, because that kind of commitment requires a belief in something.

Rule of Two Walls stimulates further thought and provokes genuine outrage. It offers yet another valuable perspective on Putin’s continuing war crimes. It also makes it clear how profoundly Putin and his followers misjudged Ukrainian unity and resolve. They more his Z-thugs try to erase Ukrainian identity, the more the Ukrainian people re-assert it.

Nature: Saving the Animals of Ukraine, on PBS

Do you like dolphins? If so, you should despise Putin. Since the launch of his illegal invasion, the Ukrainian wildlife reserve on the Black Sea has found the corpses of at least 5,000 dolphins, but they estimate thousands more have died. Clearly, animals have suffered from Russia’s military aggression, just like the Ukrainian people. Yet, despite the chaos and danger, ordinary Ukrainians have risked their lives to rescue animals both wild and domestic. Viewers need to watch their brave efforts, which Anton Ptushkin documents in “Saving the Animals of Ukraine,” premiering this Wednesday on PBS, as part of the current season of Nature.

It sure is funny how everyone who was so concerned about the animals in the Baghdad Zoo have had so little to say about the animals of Ukraine. Regardless, the entire world saw images of desperate Ukrainian refugees carrying their beloved pet cats and dogs. As a result, at least one NGO talking head had to dramatically rethink they way he thought about refugees. Inevitably, many pets were still left behind, often not intentionally, but rather due to unexpected Russian bombardments. Zoopatrol was organized to save those animals, either by jail-breaking them outright, or noninvasively feeding them through front-door peep-holes (this mostly works for cats).

Perhaps their most famous rescue is Shafa, who was found by drones trapped on the exposed ledge of a completely bombed-out seventh-floor apartment, where she had been perched for sixty days, with minimal food or water. Despite her advanced age, they successfully nursed Shafa back to health. Since then, she has become an online sensation, symbolizing Ukrainian resilience in her own grumpy cat way.

Likewise, Patron the Jack Russell terrier has also become an international influencer, thanks to his work sniffing out landmines. Patron’s small size gives him an advantage over other ordinance-detecting dogs, because he is too light to set-off mines calibrated for human weight. That little guy is a charmer.

Unfortunately, many of the stories Ptushkin documents are profoundly sad, like the two animal shelters that took very different approaches when evacuating their human staffs. Tragically, both shelters were near Hostomel Airport, which Putin’s thugs and mercenaries bombed into rubble, greatly distressing the animals in the process. Clearly, several on-camera experts suggest one shelter handled the challenge in a much more humane manner, but the real villain is Putin, who put both shelters directly in harm’s way.

ND/NF ’24: Intercepted

This is a film built around real people, who, like reality TV stars, constantly embarrass and disgrace themselves. In the case of these Russian soldiers, they repeatedly confess to war crimes, wanton cruelty, jingoistic prejudice, and just generally getting their butts kicked on the legitimate battlefield by Ukrainian soldiers. They were calling home, but Ukrainian intelligence was listening. The resulting recordings reveal the depravity and demoralization of the invading Russian military in Oksana Karpovych’s documentary, Intercepted, which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

It is easy to understand why Russian soldiers are not supposed to phone home. They reveal a lot, but the intercepts the Ukrainian government chose to release to the world expose the Russian militarist attitude rather than sensitive intelligence. For instance, nearly every caller uses the terms “Khokhols” and “Banderites,” which are Russian slurs for the Ukrainian people.

Several calls frankly describe the intentional mass murder of Ukrainian civilians. They are literally talking shooting people in the head and then dumping them in a ditch. Much like the harrowing 20 Days in Mariupol, Intercepted should be entered into evidence during a future war crimes tribunal.

The confessions are truly damning, but the attitude of the Russians back home might be even more disturbing. Their girlfriends, wives and mothers express outrage that the Ukrainians are not welcoming the Russian invaders into their home, even while literally cheering on the torture and killing of non-combatant Ukrainians.

Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World

It is not often that political documentaries intersect with culinary docs. Unfortunately for Ukraine, that is the case with this film. You can blame Putin because it is entirely his fault. This Ukrainian restaurant is located in the East Village, but its heart is definitely with Ukraine as it fights for its survival. Director-editor-producer Michael Fiore shines a spotlight on the restaurant and the family that still operates it, in Veselka: The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World, which opens this Friday in New York.

Originally, Volodymyr Darmochwal founded Veselka (Ukrainian for “rainbow”) as a candy store, when the Second Avenue area below 14^th Street was considered “Little Ukraine.” His son-in-law Tom Birchard was not Ukrainian, but he started working at Veselka after college and somehow, he never left. Under his watch, it evolved into a diner and then expanded into a landmark restaurant. His son Jason (obviously half-Ukrainian) now runs Veselka and its related outreach efforts, but his father is never that far from the house floor.

Fiore provides a solid history of the restaurant, explaining how New York City’s financial collapse almost ruined Veselka too. Nevertheless, it survived, becoming a community institution that customers rallied around during freezing cold era of outdoor pandemic dining. Yet, quite appropriately, Fiore devotes the greatest screentime to Veselka’s role as a center of Ukrainian advocacy and fundraising, following Putin’s brutal invasion.

In fact, Veselka is surprisingly revealing in the way it documents the change of attitude in the restaurant’s employees. At first, few of Veselka staff beyond the Birchards are willing to sit for interviews, but as Putin’s atrocities escalate, they feel compelled to tell their families’ stories on-camera. In fact, there are a lot of poignant moments in Veselka, because the drama is real and the potential for tragedy back home is a constant threat they must live with. Fiore really brings that reality home, while avoiding any sense of exploitation or manufactured melodrama.

Red Harvest, Graphic Novel

The desire to erase Ukraine as a nation and the Ukrainians as a people did not start with Putin. He just revived a longstanding Soviet tradition. In the early 1930s, Stalin deliberately killed at least four million Ukrainians through starvation and other contributing methods in what is now known as the Holodomor. In this case, the “bug” of socialism’s poor performance became a “feature” when applied to the brutal collectivization of Ukrainian agriculture. As both writer and artist, Ukrainian Michael Cherkas depicts the true story of the Holodomor through the fictional eyes of Mykola Kovalenko, the sole survivor of his composite family, in the graphic novel, Red Harvest, which is now on-sale where books and comics are sold.

Initially, Kovalenko was born into a big, loving rural Ukrainian family. Their recent harvests were bountiful, which should have been good news. However, Stalin’s true-believing enforcers tar successful family farmers such as themselves “kulaks,” or wealthy peasant. That might sound like a contradiction in terms, but it really meant a class enemy, likely to be dispossessed and deported to work camps.

In some ways, Red Harvest is the dark inverse of Fiddler on the Roof, in which Kovalenko’s big sister Nadya marries Borys Shchurenko, an ardent Communist activist, who whisks her away to the big city. However, unlike the faithful Perchik, Shchurenko returns to sleepy Zelenyi Hai in triumph. Those who are not blacklisted and deported are forced to relinquish their farms and slowly starve, as all the collective crops are shipped to Moscow, to be exported for hard currency. Instead of protecting the Kovalenkos, Shchurenko betrays them, while brutally abusing Nadya.

Somehow, Kovalenko, now a “Tato” (grandfather) himself, survived and escaped to Canada. He is now the happy patriarch of another large family, who are safe from the horrors of famine and collectivization. It is easy to understand why he rarely talked about the Holodomor before the events of the current day prologue and epilogue. Every time readers see the young Kovalenko loses another family member, it is absolutely heartbreaking. Yet, this is still a survivor’s story.

Cherkas opens a window into the devastating horror of the Holodomor by showing it from young Kovalenko’s perspective. It is hard to fully grasp the enormity of it all, but we can start by multiplying what happens in Zelenyi Hai, by hundreds of thousands.

A House Made of Splinters, on POV

It is not like these kids had it easy to begin with. In many cases, their alcoholic parents had yet to inquire regarding their status, even after Ukrainian social services revoked their parental rights. Then their welcoming halfway home in Eastern Ukraine was forced to evacuate when Putin launched his illegal invasion. When the troops crossed the border, filmmaker Simon Lereng Wilmont had already finished shooting his Academy Award-nominated documentary A House Made of Splinters, which airs Monday on PBS stations, as part of the current season of POV.

Unlike Eastern Front and 20 Days in Mariupol, House Made of Splinters is not a war film, but the Russian dirty war in Donbass was indeed stretching Ukraine’s already strained resources for social services. Frankly, the three kids Wilmont focuses on are lucky to be there. Longtime educator/case workers Margaryta Burlutska and Olga Tronova provided a sheltering environment for the children, who were suddenly dealing with abandonment issues on top of everything else.

The Lysychansk Center was sort of a way station. Eventually, their residents either leave for a state-run orphanage or foster parents recruited by Burlutska and Tronova. Generally, fostering is the preferable option, but it essentially means the foster children have given up hope for a further life with their dysfunctional birth parents.

The three focal children all must come to terms with that reality, which is definitely some very real-life drama. It is also very depressing. However, thanks to Burlutska and Tronova, some of the kids have relatively happy endings—at least until the Russians invade.

Eastern Front, on OVID.tv

They are a bit like Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms, but the war is happening in their own country. For them, volunteering as a medics and ambulance drivers was the only way they could serve during the war. Many started in the Donbass region as early as 2014 and they continued to serve following Putin’s full invasion, despite some being judged “unfit” for armed combat (due to health reasons). Medic Yevhen Titarenko captures a country that is remarkably unified, despite being under constant fire in Eastern Front, his eye-witness documentary (completed with the editorial input of “co-director” Vitaliy Mansky, the acclaimed documentarian exiled to Latvia), which premieres today on OVID.tv.

You will definitely see some things driving an ambulance around Kherson and Kharkiv. That is why Titarenko started documenting the horrors he witnessed, employing hand-held devices, smart phones, and body cams. Much of what he captured is horrifying. Yet, some of the quiet moments are even more telling.

In between their emergency calls, Titarenko and his fellow medics, relax, chew the fat, and even celebrate being alive together. Many have similar stories, especially those who hail from families with strong Russian connections. At first, they were the odd ones out for supporting the Maidan protests. However, after Putin’s illegal invasion, their parents and grandparents have become ardent Ukrainian patriots. Their anecdotal evidence suggest Putin has ironically unified the supposedly fractious Ukrainians—against Russia.

Eastern Front is a powerful and bracing film. However, it might unfairly suffer in comparison if seen soon after Mstyslav Chernov’s jaw-droppingly harrowing 20 Days in Mariupol. Yet, it has other merits, very definitely including the medics’ thoughts on Ukrainian unity and Russian propaganda. Nevertheless, Titarenko’s concluding dash through a war-zone can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Normandy landing in Saving Private Ryan.

20 Days in Mariupol

One day, hopefully soon, this film will be entered into evidence in a war crimes tribunal of Putin and his enablers. For ninety-plus minutes, it records the systemic targeting of Ukrainian non-combatant civilians in the port city of Mariupol. “War Crime” is simply the only term that suits the events Ukrainian journalist Mstyslav Chernov and his Frontline and AP colleagues documented, like snipers assassinating nurses entering a hospital, which have no remotely credibly military justification. No matter what they might think of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol will knock the wind out of audiences when it opens this Friday in New York.

You will see several children die while watching this film and you will share the grief of their parents, even if you have no children of your own. Chernov (a native of Kharkiv) and his colleagues were there to show the world what was happening, but the Russian forces definitely did not want the story getting out.

Right from the start, they cut all power and internet access to the besieged city. There were only a handful of hotspots where Chernov could file his reports. Everything the world saw during the early days of the Mariupol siege came from his efforts. That is why the Russians wanted him. It was not just about stopping him. They also wanted to force him to recant.

Over the course of 20 days, Chernov records a city in crisis. We see one hospital shelled into rubble and another terrorized by sniper fire. Apartment buildings with no reasonable military significance are regularly razed. Nobody is safe, especially not children trying to enjoy a football game during an occasional moment of calm.

Messages from Ukraine, in Comic Art Form

You have to give the University of Toronto Press credit for their faith in Ukraine. Even for “instant books” it takes weeks, more likely months, to acquire, edit, design, sell-in, and print a new title. Ukraine now appears to be winning back territory (so of course, Putin has responded with more war crimes), but the prognosis for the invaded nation was probably not as optimistic when this title started the publication process. However, it had an urgent point to make, which is still valid. Former Ukrainian participants in a Swedish program for migrant policy specialists (SAYP) react to the initial horrors of Putin’s invasion in Gregg Bucken-Knapp & Joonas Sildre’s graphic novel Messages from Ukraine, which is now on-sale at online booksellers.

When Putin launched his full-scale war, Bucken-Knapp and his co-workers immediately reached out to their Ukrainian colleagues, offering them shelter in Sweden, if they could somehow reach the Scandinavian safe haven. Many of the initial responses they received have been collected here, illustrated by Sildre (who also took an active curatorial role). Some decided to stay and fight, while others decided to flee—in a few cases carrying their pet cat or gerbil with them. For those under siege in Mariupol, it was already too late to leave. Some expats considered returning to fight, while others continuing applying their training to assist their own migrant countrymen in Romania, or other surrounding countries.

Frankly, the short Messages (30-some pages of art, plus supplementary text) probably would have had more power if it had more fully developed two or three survivors’ narratives, rather than telling multiple sketches. People really need story and character development to move them to action. There are some viscerally expressive images in Messages, but its fragmentary nature limits its power.

Presumably, Bucken-Knapp & Sildre felt compelled to represent as a variety of voices, which we can respect. The results still have great value and timely significance documenting the shock and horror of Putin’s war—and the proceeds go the Canada-Ukraine Foundation, so it is an altogether worthy endeavor.

Sniper: The White Raven

Ukrainian Mykola Voronin went on the same journey as Ron Kovic, but in the reverse direction. He started out as a hippy, dovish ecology professor, before the brutality of the invading Russians turned him into the Ukrainian Sniper. Sadly, his pacificist principles did not deter Putin’s war criminals from their scorched earth tactics. Channeling his rage, Voronin reinvents himself into a warrior in Marian Bushan’s Sniper: The White Raven, which opens tomorrow in New York.

Voronin is a real-life figure and the events in this film are as real as it gets. Before the invasion, he and his wife moved to the Donbas region to live in the windmill-powered sustainable cottage he devised, where they also intended to raise their unborn baby. Then the Russians came. Only Voronin survived.

Given his bike-to-class lifestyle, Voronin was already reasonably fit, but he was completely untrained in modern war-fighting. However, his desire for revenge motivates him to learn quickly. Eventually, he volunteers for sniper training, developing a talent for it, but he still needs to work on the required patience.

After all the flag-waving Russian propaganda movies set during WWII several genre distributors embarrassingly proceeded to release during the early days Putin’s full-scale invasion, it is nice to see the Ukrainian perspective finally get some representation. (Make no mistake, Russians believe with a religious fervor that their victory in Great Patriotic War gives them the right to control and dictate life in Eastern Europe.) Yet, the psychological complexity of Pavlo Aldoshyn’s portrayal of Voronin will still appeal to New Yorkers who are put off by the faintest whiff of “jingoism,” (which only seems to apply to Western democracies).

In fact, everything about White Raven is scrupulously realistic, especially the scenes of combat. They should look credible, because the large-scale sequences often feature active-duty Ukrainian military personnel as extras. Presumably, this is a story they could all relate to. Again, that makes sense, since Bushan co-wrote the screenplay with Voronin himself.