Directed by Alisa Kovalenko • 2023 • Ukraine

Alisa Kovalenko’s collective portrait of teenagers in the Donbas just prior to the full-scale invasion is a moving tribute to a world of opportunity now lost to military aggression. Andriy, Illia, Lera, Liza, and Ruslan have come of age in a world where shelling and gunfire have been facts of life since 2014 – but this has not stopped them from dreaming of a better life. Then the opportunity to travel to the Himalayas on an “adventure therapy” expedition suddenly opens their horizons up to new challenges. With both tenderness and urgency, Kovalenko reveals a generation raised amid suffering but full of life: a generation who must now bear the burden of occupation and exile as a result of Russian aggression.

WE WILL NOT FADE AWAY • МИ НЕ ЗГАСНЕМО
Written and directed by Alisa Kovalenko
Cinematography by Alisa Kovalenko and Serhiy Stetsenko
Music by Wojciech Frycz

In Ukrainian and Russian with English subtitles