W Ukrainie

Bombed out streets, plywood boards instead of windows, destroyed Russian tanks. These are the recognisable signs of the Russian war on Ukraine, outward traces that are reproduced in the mass media. With these images as their starting point, the directorial team of Tomasz Wolski and Piotr Pawlus set out on a journey through Ukraine, from the cities in the west via Kyiv to Kharkiv. This route leads them deep into the experience of the war, from observing its consequences on the street to living it alongside Ukrainians. Sudden explosions near a bus stop, dinner in the bomb shelter in the repurposed Underground, hiding out with Ukrainian soldiers, cemeteries over which Ukrainian flags flutter like a thick grove of trees over fresh graves. Shot by shot, the directors substitute easy reproducible images that merely skim the surface of the war with a deep dive into the reality in which the country has been living since February 24, 2022. Ukraine’s sovereignty is even underscored in the film’s title, the proposition na (“on”), which has traditionally been used to refer to parts of former empires, being replaced with v (“in”) to underscore its independence as a state.