BONEY PILES

14-year-old Nastya guides the viewer through her bombed-out house – she can still remember the day her village was destroyed and her father died, down to the last detail. The Russian-Ukrainian front is a scant one hundred meters away and the fighting has been going on for almost a decade. The horrors of war in Eastern Ukraine themselves become the setting for this documentary film – and it is surrounded by these piles of rubble, ruins and utter devastation that Nastya roams about with her friends, clutching the last tiny spark of childhood that remains in their possession. This portentous portrait of war can no longer be described as "dystopian documentation": on 24 February 2022, Russia began its attack on Ukraine in its entirety – suddenly millions of civilians find themselves in the midst of a terrifying, vicious war. Taras Tomenko paints a moving contemporary portrait: with calm, discrete shots, he accompanies the children as a silent observer through an unsettlingly grey landscape. Youthful innocence contrasts strikingly with the bitter context, while Nastya attempts to explain to the viewer the real meaning of war and the effects it has on human beings.