DE, UA

2025

90 min

In development

Lights

Lichter

Directing: Mila TeshaievaMarcus Lenz

Synopsis

They find themselves in the middle of a war: a young girl, a newly married couple, a city official, a yoga teacher. They have a painful task to restore their lives from the ruins and they handle it with strength and solidarity. But the trauma and echoes of the conflict will follow them in the daily life?
In the spring 2022, after the liberation of Bucha region, the life seemed to return back. The feeling of solidaroty, the proudness to be able to defend the capital made people hopeful. But as the war in Ukraine goes on, and more and more young men and women return home in the coffins, the inner conflicts in the society start to unfold.

In our film, we aim to speak about universal experiences of war and the challenges that conflict poses for society. The moments of common history, decisive moments for Ukrainians are told and juxtaposed with personal stories of people whom we follow from April 2022. Each of our protagonists has a common starting point - the liberation of the Bucha region and a common goal - to restore life back to normality. Each of them must overcome difficulties, caused by trauma, division of society, and the war being far from over.

The film is built on contrasting elements: the moments of togetherness, this polyphony of love, violence, poetry, humor, and destruction come together. With our closeness to the protagonists and without serving the expected image of victims, we want to tell of this polyphony, to leave room for the viewers’ own experience. With an openness and a quality formulated as “cinema”, we envision a film that takes its time to capture intimate and tender moments in a violent war environment.
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