Maryna Stepanska

After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the lives of Ukrainian filmmakers changed dramatically. The film follows several characters who made their choices under new life-threatening circumstances. Alisa Kovalenko, film director, voluntarily went to the frontline, leaving her little son and husband back home. After five years in a Russian prison, Oleg Sentsov, a film director, goes to the frontline, putting his career on hold. Cinematographers Serhiy Mykhalchuk and Yuriy Gruzinov, and producer Volodymyr Yatsenko started to document war crimes from the first day of the invasion. Roman Liubiy, film director, started volunteering and then decided to train as a sniper. The family of cinematographers Elena Chekhovskaya and Mykhail Markov survived the occupation in Irpin, escaped, and then returned to a destroyed house with their children. Yaroslav Pilunski, a cinematographer, became an air intelligence officer, leaving behind his projects. “It was this moment that made me want to take up the camera again,” says Maryna. “To capture all of us in this new reality, although it seems difficult to imagine the shape of this future film. We are all a work in progress now. When the current circumstances end, an unfinished product will take on a new shape.”