Hanna Tykha

The film’s events take place on a single day: August 24, 2022, the day Ukraine celebrates the 31st anniversary of the renewal of independent statehood. The film combines places and people that best capture the country’s wartime spirit. The locations are: the relatively safe cities of Kyiv and Lviv; the cities under daily missile fire of Kharkiv and Mykolaiv; a trench at the frontlines near Donetsk; and the beaches of Odesa. The film presents a day in the life of a beach police patrol, a woman anti-tank missile operator, a water delivery driver, a mortar unit soldier, a rapid assault unit soldier, a 14-year-old pub janitor, an artist and a former member of parliament. Together, these people and places create an engaging mosaic of a day in the life of Ukraine.

Roma was working in London when the Ukrainian conflict rapidly escalated with Russia’s army rolling across the border of his home. He decides to return to his family, whose town soon becomes a battlefield. While they take shelter in basements, cut off from the rest of their country, Roma joins an air intelligence unit, operating drones to locate the whereabouts of the invading force. As the drone flies, Roma is so close to his family, but in reality, the gulf between them is enormous.

Once upon a time the small bridge perched near small town. A lot has changed since then, but the bridge remembers old times and can tell us about it.