Rally cry for resistance: Documentary Porcelain War examines choice to stay in Ukraine ‘Our responsibility as artists and filmmakers is to bring hope and inspiration to the audience’ By: Martin Zeilig Posted: 3:00 AM CST Friday, Jan. 17, 2025 Last Modified: 5:09 PM CST Friday, Jan. 24, 2025 Updates

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“Ukraine is like porcelain, easy to break but impossible to destroy,” artist and co-director Slava Leontyev says in Porcelain War, a documentary filmed in Ukraine over 18 months following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the country in February 2022.

Porcelain War — which opens Jan. 17 at Cineplex McGillivray for a week-long Winnipeg run — follows three artists who choose to stay in their native Ukraine amid the war, “armed with their art, their cameras and, for the first time in their lives, their guns.”

The film focuses on Leontyev and his wife, Anya Stasenko, as they sculpt and paint fanciful porcelain figurines. The delicate creations and the artists’ attachment to nature are an intrinsic part of the documentary, set against scenes of falling missiles and ravaged countrysides.

Leontyev, a native of Ukraine’s second largest battle-scarred city, Kharkiv, is also seen training new recruits as a special forces shooting instructor with Ukraine’s military.

The feature-length documentary is filmed by fellow artist and first-time cinematographer Andrey Stefanov.

“The stories we tell through our art, they are also our resistance,” Leontyev says during a Zoom call while the team travels the U.S. with the film.

“It’s not that difficult to scare people, but it’s hard to forbid them to live.”

Porcelain War — co-directed by Los Angeles filmmaker Brendan Bellomo — won the 2024 Sundance Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. documentary category category and has received critical acclaim at other North American film festivals. On Jan. 23, it was nominated in the Best Documentary category of the 2025 Academy Awards, which will be handed out March 3.

The film offers a rare view of life inside the war-torn country.

“Slava and Anya and Andrey, they are everyday Ukrainians and artists. They show what this experience is like for everyday people who stay behind and resist and create. This allows people to step into their shoes and to really understand what is going on — a sovereign, independent democratic country that was attacked from the outside,” Bellomo says.

For Leontyev, this is the story of his friends and fellow citizens.

“They are regular people, who can defend independence and our culture and preserve humanity even in the face of this horrible aggression,” he says.

“Even in this dark time, it’s not only about Ukraine. It’s about everyone who is ready to stand for democracy because resistance is possible. People are afraid of war because war is horrible and disgusting and nobody wants to be upset, but our responsibility as artists and filmmakers is to bring hope and inspiration to the audience.”

Bellomo and the Ukrainian documentarians collaborated over video calls from their respective homelands.

“When we were making the film we were separated by two cultures, time zones, multiple countries. It was an incredible challenge,” Bellomo says.

An added challenge was getting equipment into Ukraine. Bellomo connected with a group of Ukrainians living in the United States, who were moving medical supplies into the country and agreed to deliver the cameras.

“It was a makeup artist from New Jersey who had filled her apartment with over 50 bags of medical supplies and military aid and would personally take it to the airport, fly it into Poland and load it into trucks and drive it into Ukraine,” Bellomo says.

Language was another barrier. Bellomo, Leontyev and Stefanov communicated over Zoom through an interpreter.

“While we were waiting for these translations, we would sketch. These sketches would become storyboards and plans for shots,” Bellomo says. “Even though we had this distance between us, and only got to know each other over Zoom, (art) became a way of uniting us.”

fparts@freepress.mb.ca