Formally inventive and emotionally resonant, Olga Chernykh’s documentary feature debut highlights the power of cinema as a guardian of memories. Using a wealth of archival footage to act as a bridge between the past and the present, the film views the war in Ukraine through a family lens. Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 is contextualised, not as a lone event, but within a history of aggression and generational loss.
Known locally as the “City of Million Roses”, Donetsk was where Chernykh grew up in a loving family. Traces of her happy childhood – birthday celebrations, weddings, school trips – are imprinted all over Chernykh’s old home videos, yet her diaristic voiceover casts a dark shadow over these images. Since the Donbas war in 2014, parts of Donetsk are now Russian-occupied territories. Chernykh and her parents have relocated to Kyiv; her grandmother, Zoryna, chose to stay behind. Against the reality of their current separation, their moments of togetherness, which only exist on tapes and memory cards, are imbued with a painful fragility.
Zoryna’s own life is also marred by gaps, expulsion and forced migration that date back to the Soviet era. While reckoning with these open wounds, the astonishingly fluid editing provides a crucial thread between personal and collective histories. Like a delicate dance, the montage leaps from everyday activities to the sights and sounds of war, such as the relentless Ukrainian TV broadcasts reporting ominous news from the front. The juxtaposition not only conveys Ukrainian resilience, but also the feeling of living between different timelines, a state of mind endured by the displaced. Despite their new life in Kyiv, Chernykh and her family will always yearn for Donetsk, a city whose streets they can only visit through Google Maps.
• A Picture to Remember is on True Story from 21 February.
