Since Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014, and the ensuing near-constant skirmishes in the Donbass region, eastern Ukraine;

Some of the country's most talented filmmakers rallied to address and explore the trauma that followed.

The cultural vitality of Ukraine during this period was demonstrated by this wave of ambitious films, which shed light on the human toll of the battles with the Russians.

In 2015, Yevgeny Avinevsky presented the documentary Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom, which is about the protests that erupted against the government's 2014 decision to freeze a trade agreement with the European Union, fearing from Russia;

Nominated for an Oscar.

In the same year, the comedy series "Servants of the People" starring Volodymyr Zelensky, the current Ukrainian president, began airing.

In 2019, writer and director Valentin Vasjanovic presented the war drama Atlantis, which won the Venice Film Festival.

It was followed by director Nariman Aliyev with the drama "Homeward", then director Irina Celik presented the documentary "The Earth Is Blue as an Orange" in 2020, which was nominated for a prize at the Berlin Festival.

"reflection"

Despite the futility of these films in the face of bombs, they "succeed in providing a different view of the lives and fears of the Ukrainian people who suffer from the mortal threats of this conflict, and provided an opportunity for more empathy and an understanding of the problem," says writer and critic Patrick Brzeski.

Which we will stop in front of in the movie “Reflection” produced in 2021, written and directed by Valentin Vasjanovic as well, providing his treatment of the horrors of armed conflict, and what happens to the soul of a man and a nation at war, and was nominated for the Hamburg, Toronto, and Venice Film Festivals.

Brzeski described it as providing "a powerful panoramic view of the conflict, through a picture full of devastating images of the intensity of terror, but at the same time, it is full of moments of beauty and enduring love."

Film critic Leo Baraclaw expressed his admiration for it, saying, "We were struck by the emotional and visual impact of seeing director Valentine, it's a movie you can't forget."

Modern apartment and a terrible prison

“With an astonishing combination of restraint and artistry,” Brzeski puts it;

Using a series of stills to take a closer look at the horrors of the Russo-Ukrainian war, Vasyanovich tells the heart-wrenching story of a young surgeon doctor Serhiy (Roman Lutsky) who volunteers to care for the wounded near the battlefield in the Donbass, Ukraine, and is promptly captured by Russian-speaking soldiers. Pretending to be indigenous, they were, in fact, Russian fighters who were shipped in to help in the battles.

Serhiy is taken to a secret prison in the Donetsk region, where his medical skills are brutally abused, and he is subjected to a horrific series of humiliation and violence, witnessing brutal torture and humiliation, and indifference to human life;

Before he is released, he goes through an agonizing recovery process with his young daughter in Kyiv, which stirs public sympathy.

Serhii does not speak much, in addition to suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder" (PTSD), so "Vasjanovic leaves us to imagine his reactions to events, through what some of his conversations with his daughter show, that he has a poetic tendency to help him process the trauma that is exposed Her", says critic Anna Smith. Vasjanovic allowed us no more than 20 minutes of rest, before turning things upside down, and making the next forty minutes a torture for both the audience and Doctor Serhi.

Also, Vasjanovic did not miss the opportunity to highlight the striking contrast between the progress of Serhiy's modern, comfortable apartment with bay window overlooking the city, and the terrible misery of the prison;

The man, who had witnessed all these atrocities, could no longer see anything surprising, even the moment a bird flew straight to the apartment window and died.

schizophrenia cold aggressors

Vasjanovic continues to narrate events in a sober and realistic manner, retaining his insistence on the cold schizophrenia characteristic of the aggressors, so much so that the horror they used to instill in the victims no longer needs to be aroused;

So, "Vasianović found no need for close-ups, music, or extensive narration to express the pain of a tortured man; or to point out the suffering of a paramedic making a silent decision to end another person's life to spare them further pain," according to Anna Smith.

Vasjanovic keeps the camera still and out of the action, and has set his beautiful but painful “cadres” in such a way that it sometimes makes it difficult for us to understand exactly what is happening, and he presents images of the moral contradictions that war shows;

Between the lives and psychology of civilians and their actions and reactions.

Where the surgeon’s table is replaced by a concrete torture base, colored balls dangling from a clear wall turn into bullets smashing windshields, hands that save lives at Gate of Mercy kill, and a car repurposed as a crematorium adorns the words “Humanitarian Aid from the Russian Federation.”

A sharper sense of the almost surreal absurdity sees how a person is saved from a wild dog attack in the woods by a polo player on a horse;

Much more difficult than this is to follow "the suffering of the soul of a person who is trying to return to life in his home and among his family, in a long and painful process, after he has swallowed all this," says critic Jessica Kiang.

Thus, "we have to sit anxious, watching the action unfold, unable to move or intervene, there are no easy answers in this thought-provoking film," says Smith.

Just another dark and disturbing hour in his 125-minute timeline, with a little glimmer of beauty, painstakingly reach for him, tells us that “the resilience of familial love may prevail despite all the horrors that have happened,” says Jessica Kiang.