A deeply prescient and gently revealing documentary, One Day in Ukraine, selected for International Competition, delivers just as the title states…a snapshot of one day in a country under siege as ordinary people (and sometimes extraordinary ones) go about their lives, whether it be preparing food or walking devastated street heavily armed and ready to fight.
By its very nature it is a simple film, but also one that offers a deep-rooted sense of anger despite there being no formal interviews or voiceover. Media activist and filmmaking collective Babylon ’13, formed during the Maidan uprisings, focus on the events (varying from the mundane to the chilling) of March 14, 2022 – defined as the 2,944th day of the Russian-Ukrainian War.
The film actually opens on the evening of March 13 as the air raid sirens start and the camera heads downstairs at an underground station, observing the people milling around the platform. Some are in sleeping bags while others talk quietly with a few scattered belongings around them. An animated film is projected onto a wall to entertain the young ones. An elderly woman describes how her building shook during the bombing and how much safer she feels in the underground.
The film swiftly moves to 6.30am on March 14 as the sirens indicate that the air raid alert has been lifted. Dog walkers are out on the streets again, soldiers sleep and people cook, though the backdrop is largely quiet and pensive. In an amusing aside soldiers ritually wipe their muddy feed on a Moscow 1980 Summer Olympics doormat.
The film spends time with a small selection of characters, none of whom receive an on-screen credit during the footage. According to the festival blurb, the day is “witnessed by a pop music star, video engineer, historian, art restorer, polar researcher and pensioner, who have all been forced to radically change and re-evaluate their lives.”
It is hard to know which name to ascribe to which character, though Dasha (heavily wrapped up against the cold and busy peeling potatoes for a restaurant) admits that men want to shake her hand. She is Daria “Dasha” Viktorivna Astafieva, a Ukrainian model, singer and actress (who was apparently the 2007 Playmate of the Year for Ukrainian Playboy), though she never talks about her past and is busy focussing on simply getting through the present.
Other vignettes include a drone pilot showing soldiers’ footage of tanks and soldiers hidden in woods; snipers walking past abandoned vehicles and battered buildings; soldiers debating their situation; ordinary people quietly getting on with their lives, and – in a rather unnerving sequence – men captured for looting being bound to lamp-posts, gagged and with their trousers dulled down around their ankles. One passing man says: ”Guys, don’t cut them loose…they need time to think about life.”
Largely shot in and around Kyiv, the film may well be simple in tone and structure, but it offers an immersive snapshot of a city that has been transformed into a battle zone. The notion of a working day or a weekend have been put to one side as Kyivans stoically endure and resist the Russian invasion of their country. The fact that March 14 is also Ukrainian Volunteer Day adds an additional tone of irony to a film that dwells on the fact that almost everyone has transformed into a volunteer of sorts.
Ukraine-Poland, 2022, 77mins
Dir: Volodymyr Tykhyy
Production: Black Photon
Producers: Igor Savychenko, Volodymyr Tykhyy
Cinematography: Yevhen Kozeko, Serhii Stetsenko, Iaroslav Pilunskiy, Ihor Ivanko, Ihor Lutsenko, Maksym Ruban, Yuri Gruzinov, Yuri Pupyrin, Illya Yehorov, Ivan Bannikov, Roman Liubyi, Oleksandr Shkrabak
Editors: Volodymyr Tykhyy, Ivan Bannikov
With: Darya Astafieva, Ihor Lutsenko, Yevhen Dykyy, Yevhen Nyshchuk, Andrii Levus, Ihor Mazur
