Offscreen voices remember a childhood in Mariupol, happy days by the sea. With their schoolmates they had planted willow trees that still grace the shore, more than fifty years later. Today the beach is deserted, only a few fishermen are waiting for a catch. Even the deepwater port seems abandoned. The armed conflict in eastern Ukraine has changed everything overnight. The holiday region is now a dangerous exclusion zone. What’s left are the memories.

Annina Wettstein