PORCELAIN WAR

Ukraine/US, 2024, 87 minutes, Colour.

Slava Leontyev, Anya Stasenko, Andrey Stefanov.

Directed by Brendan Bellomo, Slava Leontyev.

2024 Oscar nominee for Best Documentary. It can be seen as a companion piece to the 2023 Oscar-winning 20 Days at Mariapul. The setting is the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the fight back.

The film opens with porcelain miniatures, the sculpting the formation of the porcelain, the delicate painting with the small brush to form attractive small pieces. We are introduced to the artist, Anya, working on the porcelain, but also out in nature, with camera, capturing the beauties of flora and fauna in close-up, using them as models for her painting. Her companion is Slava, working with the porcelain, also a photographer. And there is also their friend Andrey.

But, it is 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The focus of the film is on art, especially in time of war and resistance. A lot of the commentary focuses on the nature of art, its significance, its transcendence, symbol of humanity, the continued need for art to sustain the human spirit.

As the film continues, with the bombardments in the town of Kharkiv, 25 miles from the Russian border, buildings destroyed, people killed and injured, the artists decide that they must stay and resist. However, there is a great spirit of patriotism, the film showing how ordinary people with ordinary occupations, and including artists, join the resistance and fight back, finding new skills in command and strategies.

Anya Slava decides to make a film, something new for him, but the end result captures the atmosphere of the fight back against the Russians in 2022-2023. Quite a lot of on location photography, the small squads, the leadership, the dangers, the strategies.

And so, the film links the human spirit in resistance during oppression with the human spirit being creative, Anya continuing to make images, giving a symbolic Dragon to a group of soldiers for encouragement in their resistance. And many other examples and discussions about the different parts and the significance in war and transcending war.

And, right throughout the film there is their small dog, Frodo, cheerful spirit in the times.