Artwork mobilizes in opposition to bullets, bombs and tanks in “Porcelain War,” a documentary about how magnificence not solely persists amid the wreckage of warfare however serves as a mandatory existential weapon of its personal. The movie, which received the U.S. grand jury prize for documentary on the 2024 Sundance Movie Competition, is competing for an Academy Award — drawing never-more-urgent focus to the Ukrainian battle in opposition to invading Russian forces.
It’s the third yr in a row {that a} documentary about Ukraine has been nominated, with “20 Days in Mariupol” profitable the Oscar final yr. However because the title suggests, this one hits in a different way. Its topics are a pair — ceramicist Slava Leontyev and Anya Stasenko, who evocatively paints his palm-size creatures — and one other painter, their pal Andrey Stefanov. When Russian assaults escalated in February 2022, their lives have been turned the wrong way up: Leontyev and Stasenko fled their Crimean residence for Kharkiv, close to the Russian border in northeast Ukraine, whereas Stefanov apprehensively despatched his spouse and two daughters overseas for his or her security.
The boys took completely different roles as Ukrainian civilians donned camouflage to affix the battle: Leontyev turned a weapons teacher and Stefanov swapped his paintbrushes for a digital camera. Each started documenting their lives, out and in of strife, as co-director and cinematographer, respectively, of this movie. The venture, nonetheless, had peacetime roots: Polish-born producer Aniela Sidorska and American co-director Brendan Bellomo had initially hoped to collaborate on an animation venture round Stasenko and Leontyev’s folkloric miniatures. The struggle modified that.
“Slava really felt that while there were so many Western journalists that were telling an important perspective, it was from the outside,” Bellomo says, “and he really had this personal story to tell, to really try to complete that picture. And so we wanted to empower them to share this.”
Artists-turned-documentarians Slava Leontyev and Anya Stasenk create folkloric miniatures.
(Picturehouse)
With the assistance of a volunteer community, the manufacturing was in a position to arrange numerous members of Leontyev’s unit with GoPro physique cams, digital camera drones and compact cinema cameras with which they shot greater than 500 hours of footage. “They would go down into a bunker during their missions and, on Starlink video, we would have a small class,” says Bellomo, who taught them important filmmaking grammar. “They’re contractors, they’re IT professionals, doctors. They’re furniture salespeople. They’re not professional soldiers. They don’t want to fight a minute longer than they have to, but they’ve taught themselves to prepare for this war, and they felt they could teach themselves how to turn on a camera amidst battle.”
Resulting from that course of, “Porcelain War” options distinctive angles on twenty first century fight, as digital camera drones observe armed drones whereas they hover above a bomb goal. In the meantime, the synchronized physique cameras seize a number of views of troopers working collectively on the bottom. “There’s an incredibly deep, almost irony to the way that they’re looking at their situation,” says Bellomo, who lately joined Leontyev for a video dialog.
The endeavor additionally proved an emotional enhance for the troopers within the unit, which they name “Saigon” in honor of “Apocalypse Now,” a collective favourite. “It’s really important for them to make something normal during the war,” Leontyev says. At one level, his commander eased the artist’s doubts about capturing video as a substitute of bullets. “She answered me, ‘Now you have a more powerful and more impactful weapon: your camera.’ Personally, I never thought about the camera like a weapon. For me, it was a new brush for paint. But it’s really the same, because the totalitarian government is trying to take away our free choice, how to think and how to create.”
The narrative is paced by startling juxtapositions between the carnage of destroyed villages and the peaceable pure fantastic thing about the close by countryside.
Maybe the boldest distinction, although, is how a stroll by way of the woods can lead each to a trove of porcini mushrooms (dutifully collected for the troopers) and a land mine (which Leontyev defuses with an unhurried hand). “You need to keep calm,” he says. “It’s a way to survive.”
It’s the type of spirit that made such an advanced and dangerous manufacturing doable. “There’s this Ukrainian attitude of, ‘We’re going to figure it out,’” Bellomo says. “We’re going to figure it out together.”
Fortunately, features of the deliberate animation venture carried by way of, with mesmerizing sequences created by the Polish studio BluBlu, accompanied by the keening melodies of Ukrainian ethnic fusion quartet DakhaBrakha, which donated its catalog for the manufacturing to make use of because it happy.
