Photophobia

In the spring of 2022, Kharkiv metro is transformed into an experimental laboratory. Everything is reversed here – life and safety below, death and destruction above. In the middle of it all, children grow up like flowers in a greenhouse. Without fresh air, without day and night, the world has frozen into a surreal landscape that is more like a movie or a dream. This lyrical portrait of life in the midst of war, included as a special screening at the Venice Film Festival, captures a society in limbo. On the surface, the apocalypse rages, the world we know turns into a memory, a past, a mirage, a waiting room without time, and in its place there is nothing.“That was why we decided to find something most closely approaching ‘ordinary life’ and preserve it to the best of our abilities: to find a moment of genuine humanity at a time of devastating horror.”Quote from Giornate degli Autori.