Only the dead have seen the end of the war.

In 2014, three young men with no military experience whatsoever volunteered to go to the front line in eastern Ukraine. They spent two years there, near Donetsk, Luhansk and Shirokyne. Then they returned home and tried to live like ordinary people again: work, family, evenings with friends. But they cannot quite manage it. The war has left its mark on their bodies and minds, and this comes to the surface in the kitchen, in the bedroom, with the children – families fall apart in front of the camera. It is a brutal truth that is not always easy to capture on film. And then the men have to go back to war. Their previous experience was merely a preparation for what would happen in February 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion. They are back on the front line, now fully aware of what this does to them.

Yuliia Hontaruk has been filming these men for twelve years, and the film is edited in a fragmented manner, much as the men themselves might remember and experience their trauma. The footage from the front line, from home, and back from the front line does not fit together, but it is precisely this fragmentation that reveals the mark such ordeals leave on a person. And yet the film possesses a certain rhythm and cohesion that reflects to us just how powerful the human will to survive is.

Mikk Granström