Synopse
This feature-length documentary film captures the director’s reunion with his brother and dad, Musheh and David, since their last meeting in January, 2022. While the director, Zhora Papoian, has met the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in Kyiv, his family survived a month under the siege of Mariupol, their hometown, and was forced to flee abroad, unwilling to stay under the occupant’s regime. Strict regulations imposed on Ukrainian men by war, restricting them from leaving the country, make it almost impossible for Zhora to cross the border without an impactful reason and for Musheh and David, who are now in Canada, to enter Ukraine. Thus, separated by thousands of miles, they now have two options: either to await the end of the war (which now seems to be far away), or to meet somewhere half-way.
Things, however, run much smoother for the director’s mother, Talina. A year after their separation and a refugee-like life in Armenia, Talina flew to meet Zhora in December, 2022, in order to spend a long-awaited week with her son before migrating to Canada. Upon arriving to dark, rocket-shelled, snowy Kyiv, she gave her son a cross in which he was baptized as a child, and this, in return, gave me the title of the project: “My Cross”, also implying the cross that I now have to bear.
The afore-mentioned mother-son reunion was shot on camera and sparked an idea to encapsulate and research the relationship of a Ukrainian family that is scattered across different continents, and whose main option to keep the bond is via phone calls, brief encounters, and long farewells. The potential Zhora's meeting with Musheh and David aims to question if the deep political and cultural parental holes, invoked by forced war separation, can be fixed, and how close people can come to understanding after years of parting. But most importantly, it is a study of sacrifices one has to make in wartime.
Things, however, run much smoother for the director’s mother, Talina. A year after their separation and a refugee-like life in Armenia, Talina flew to meet Zhora in December, 2022, in order to spend a long-awaited week with her son before migrating to Canada. Upon arriving to dark, rocket-shelled, snowy Kyiv, she gave her son a cross in which he was baptized as a child, and this, in return, gave me the title of the project: “My Cross”, also implying the cross that I now have to bear.
The afore-mentioned mother-son reunion was shot on camera and sparked an idea to encapsulate and research the relationship of a Ukrainian family that is scattered across different continents, and whose main option to keep the bond is via phone calls, brief encounters, and long farewells. The potential Zhora's meeting with Musheh and David aims to question if the deep political and cultural parental holes, invoked by forced war separation, can be fixed, and how close people can come to understanding after years of parting. But most importantly, it is a study of sacrifices one has to make in wartime.
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