Since the full-scale invasion, independent Ukrainian cinema has moved away from grand narratives and towards something quieter, more fractured. Working with limited means, filmmakers have gravitated towards documentary and essay forms to register the everyday realities of war. These films offer a dispersed, often ambivalent portrait of a nation in the process of both resisting and reimagining itself.

This exclusive video essay is based on an essay originally written by Fedor Tot and published on the Klassiki Journal.