Love Me

The documentary follows, through several individuals, the process by which American men meet Ukrainian women through matchmaking sites. The men travel to Ukraine, join organised introduction tours and talk through interpreters. The camera records both what they expected before the journey and what happens on the ground. Some of the relationships end in marriage, some never start, and some come apart years later. Jonathon Narducci's film takes no side, and that is its strongest quality. It does not make the men ridiculous, and it does not frame the women as either victims or opportunists; both sides have their own calculation, their own loneliness and their own economic reality. The industry itself sits in the background: paid introduction tours, charges per translation, agency companies. The most striking thing is that it follows a few people across years and sets the expectation at the start beside where they end up.