Synopsis

Special Mention, 1-2 Competition, Warsaw Film Festival

Golden Dzyga Award for Best Actress

Kyiv International Film Festival "Molodist"

Set in Luhansk, an eastern Ukrainian city occupied by Russia-backed separatists in 2014, Daria Onyshchenko’s political drama sheds light on the aftermath of the war in Ukraine as well as the forgotten people who cannot flee the territory. Nina, a Ukrainian-language teacher who is forced to stay in Luhansk and retrain for teaching Russian, crosses paths with Andrii, a teenage orphan and decides to save him after witnessing him being arrested for raising the Ukrainian flag at school. Seeing through the suppressed anger and sense of hopelessness in each other, the two stranded souls form an unlikely bond during the turbulent time of the city’s occupation by pro-Russian separatists.