Valerii Puzik

Personal videos from the phones, camcorders, cameras and GoPros of Ukrainian soldiers are woven into a surreal journey to the frontline of the war with Russia. The film shows a bizarre world whose laws are quite different from what we are used to. The behaviour is different, the relationships unfold differently and the humour takes on different notes. The heroes wake up and fall asleep, rejoice and cry, always feeling that the recording may end at any moment.

Tolik had a dream, to flip over penguins over. It didn’t go well with the Antarctic. His dream came true in the Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone. But the film is not about it. The film is about teeth.

The film is about how the change of generations in Ukraine can transform the perception of the space around us. It is about the conflict of epochs, the confrontation between initiative and indifference, between openness and a strictly regulated life, in the course of one small renovation.

Reflections on the Lumière brothers' first film and modern warfare. The first film is like a dream of returning to a slow and unhurried life. Without explosions and combat operations. Without troop movements and deaths. It is a dream of not seeing someone else's blood on your military uniform. Of not seeing blood at all and removing the dirty pixel from yourself.

February 15, 2015, is the day when a ceasefire is supposed to begin in eastern Ukraine. The most important political achievement the country has been waiting for is to enter into an unclear state of frozen conflict in order to transfer it to the diplomatic sphere. But it is enough to find yourself in the half-ruined village of Pisky in the Donetsk region on this very day to discover, amid its apocalyptic landscapes, that politics has long been dead. Those in power do not control the events taking place in the world.