Klondike

Maryna Er Gorbach's 2022 Ukrainian film is set in the Donbas in the summer of 2014. Irka and Tolik live in a village left on the line of fighting and are expecting their first child. Irka refuses to leave her house and insists on staying even after a shell takes out one of its walls. On 17 July 2014 a passenger aircraft is shot down over the area and the wreckage falls across exactly the ground they live on. The film shows an international catastrophe through the window of one house; the camera mostly holds still and events move in and out of frame. How war makes life impossible without asking whose side you are on is its central subject. It won the directing award at Sundance and was Ukraine's Oscar submission. Who it's for: viewers who want war told through civilian experience. Who it's not for: anyone who would rather not approach an air disaster and scenes drawn from real events.