This is a war, baby

Yurii Pupirin / Ukraine / 2017 / World Premiere / 59 min.

synopsis

Without showing any explicit battle footage, this film nevertheless manages to show the life of Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers on the Donetsk front. Images of ruin and destruction from places that only recently were the scenes of fighting are transformed into a tragicomic parable of survival in a provisional space-time. Looting is a daily occurrence, and going out in search of booty becomes a boyish adventure during which the participants explore places only recently inhabited by private individuals. And when all this is recorded by a Polish television crew headed by a canny female reporter, an existential satire is born. The war is there, but somewhere around the corner.

"The most difficult thing for me in creating this film was the choice between my personal sympathies and the desire to present the most objective picture of the war I saw in front of me." Y. Pupyrin

biography

Yuriy Pupyrin (1977) originally studied education and spent some time teaching. He subsequently studied film at the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University. In 2011, he shot Valera, a personal account of his visit to a dying friend. He addressed the Ukrainian war in his second film, Chronicles of Under-Declared War (2016).