War or traces of it? What do the Docudays Film Festival – Publications

At the Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Docudays ua what is happening nowshows 71 movie from 38 countries. Cinema Up. Culture And the military of the Armed Forces Yaroslav Pidhora-Gvyadovsky He says that in one way or another, most of them tell about the war. And analyzes how the war is told by software films Film Festival.

Docudays UA is the perfect litmus paper of all human: the worst and the best. However, the war here is said mainly only as what it leads to, not about it.

The war can happen somewhere there, as in the Irish-Ukrainian-French movie « Sanatorium ». Although still nearby. Because our war is still a circle, in a circle of us.

The war is passing through us, like a train from the Polish-Lithuanian « trains » of times of the 1st or second world. Or stay in the deep past, as in the Colombian « Lagoon of the Warrior », relating to the events of the early nineteenth century. Anyway, the movie shows the consequences – the injuries of the war committed by it.

And very rarely the war is shown here and now, in the forehead, the eyes, what happens to the consequences, to the drawn traces – at the very moment of the footage of the leg – at the « doctors » is almost not visible. Because it is almost a taboo – to talk about the war she is. Not just talking about « about », but showing « as » is almost as sedgest as talking about sex. It is as if it is too unhappy, too straightforward, intolerant, and touches the shabby …

The war is often a hypocritical attitude, in fact, dictated by the marginal honesty of little controlled fear of death. Fear is forcing silence, fear forces you to be afraid.

That is why Europe may have sorted so much time after the start of a full -scale invasion of the Russian Federation withdrew military assistance to Ukraine, in fact, closing her eyes from fear that it would all move to it. Not far -sighted, almost childish, believing – « what I do not see, does not exist. »

Practically, only the Ukrainians themselves see. They are not just « dare » to look at it – they take this weight on their own, on their hump, their psyche, their life. Not all, of course. Those who remain and fight, those who help the warring, those who have not closed their eyes to the war. And these are the ways that you can see movies about all this, without fear of watching the eyes of horror.

It is still shown on Docudays UA. For example, « 2000 meters to Andreevka » From the Oscar owner Mstislav Chernov showed in the Docu/World. Rare cinema, extraordinary, real. Formally similar to Oleg Sentsov’s hyper -realistic film « Real ».

« 2000 meters … » is a scale « Real » with other components of cinema. In addition to immersion in the battle, in addition to the static of being in a trench or under fire, there is a movement, a script movement from point A to point B. And this is shown as substantively, effective and sensually at the same time.

Chernov, along with the fighters, moves through the landing – which is gone for a long time, only the storms of trees remained. The battle lasts almost all the time, throughout the following. And the path is divided literally meters: here is 1000 meters, here is 600, here is 100. And each meter is marked with shooting and death directly in the frame.

Chernov, and removing himself, and using cameras on the helmets of the fighters, describes he saw with his quiet neutral voice, memorable from « 20 days in Mariupol », adding, for example, a description of smells.

It is a documentary cinema in its most obvious sense – the fixation of events in their active deployment: the destruction of Russians, the death of our soldiers and the cries of soldiers during the battle. The vocabulary is not filtered here, and Russian mother words seem to become a separate language that can only be spoken with the Russians and the Russians.

Of course, it was impossible to avoid « 2000 meters to Andreevka » – it was a central Ukrainian documentary in 2025. But above this, the festival of films did not show such a pin – shock content, frankly seizing war in the eyes, tragic and painful polemical subtext probably exceeds the ability of the civilian viewer to perceive military realities.

However, even if the balls do not fly in the frame, the war remains indirectly in space and in the souls. As in the « sanatorium » of the Irish director Garrurka From the Docu/Main program, which is about Kuyalnik sanatorium in Odessa, allegedly hundreds of kilometers from the line of combat.

But the siren here is also buzzing, notifying the possible attack of drones or rockets. There are also military people here, they are simply treated after injuries. One patient talks about the war and the victory, and the other that the war would end if the women went to fight. A 40-year-old man explains his loneliness with the complexity of someone to find during the war, and his mother is funny-she is waiting for his grandchildren.

Showing the movie « Stitched Steps »

Photo: Stas Cartashov, Docudays UA

In beautiful Ukraine -Polish « sewed steps » Alina Maksimenko There is also no war, but as in the « sanatorium », the war is heard in sirens, sounds of explosions. And in tension from the step of this war: a girl with a broken leg and her old parents, the war jumped in Irpen. And they can be surrounded, occupation, and maybe even worse – in the paws of Russians. Therefore, the central theme of the movie Maksimenko is the very feeling of approaching the war, in its steps, so in the fear of people, which manifests itself in quarrels, shouts and impatience. « What is the forgiveness of the resurrection, if such a meat grinder? » Asks the father of the heroine.

Discussion of the movie « Switched Steps » Alina Maksimenko at the Docudays UA Festival

Photo: Stas Cartashov, Docudays UA

It seems even further from the war heroes Aminollahi Paris « The house you seek » from the Docu/Youth Program. They obviously flee – from war? persecution? oppressing? – and move to another country. But they find themselves in an emotional trap, when there are no acquaintances, relatives around them and there are no people at all, only a pretty Swedish house, peace and peace. But the absence of complicity, comfort, deeds, does not deprive them of the soul of anxiety, still filled the feelings of the house, only the house lost.

Melitanthropos’ movie team at the show

Photo: Sergey Handusenko, Docudays UA

It is possible to respond emotionally to the war and the way the heroes of the Ukrainian-Austrian-French « Militanthropos » from the Docu/Ukraine program-in one episode, guys go through the remains of Russian equipment transported to Kiev and beat it, because it is all they can.

Of course, not everyone is doing so, some who fled at the beginning of the war or transported their relatives to their eyes for their eyes, returned to put a pixel and stand in the army. Some have not fled at all, and continue to live in martial areas, as one heroine, gathering for her stove of gunpowder from Russian unobtrusive shells found in the field behind the village.

Still, Docudays UA is not about war, especially about our war. Because at the age of 4, the full -scale invasion of the Russian Federation gradually became everyday life, no matter how wild it may sound.

12 Festival programs are not clogged with films about war, only they touch it, whether it is associative when showing other wars, looking for consuming details, similar ideas, or vice versa – the opposite reasons.

Docudays UA showed a documentary of the world cinema where our war and other wars are only one of the bloody colors, one of the wounds in the body of the world, beaten with problems and pain, however, not without decisions and recovery. It is possible to solve the Gordiiv knot – that the Docudays UA festival says. Although some propose to simply « look up, at the stars », like the hero of the Spanish short « news from them » – « and find happiness in yourself. » There are still people in the world where the war has not left its traces.