She is the centre of attention, but exhausted by life. An old woman in her final days, bedridden and too weak to speak to her husband and daughter. Her selfhood fades away while in the care of her relatives, who have problems of their own. But Julia Orlik brings the woman back into the foreground with her minimalist concept and touching puppet design.

Marta Pajek (digitally) created a complex, atmospheric universe – with minimalist means and yet rich in detail. References to contemporary history meet visions of an intuited, dystopian future. We are made aware of (our own) transience in subtle, but almost brutal ways. Ageing bodies, ageing ideas. In the end, the grande dame of Polish cinema, actor Anna Polony, sings: “… when will we ever learn?”

February 2022, the beginning of the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine. When the fighting comes closer, director Alina Maksimenko flees from the district capital of Irpin north-west of Kyiv to her parents’ home in the countryside, where she gets stranded with her cat and her camera. It would be better to move even farther away, beyond the border, to be really safe, the daughter urges. Nonetheless, they decide to stay – hoping for the situation to get calmer on the one hand, trusting in the remoteness of their village refuge on the other.
The three of them hold out in an increasingly empty village. Fear spreads, tiredness. The parents refuse to change anything about their usual routines. It is an unbearable limbo that is inherently self-destructive. They try to hold on to their everyday life as best they can. Father Tolya takes care of the animals in the neighbourhood; dozens of abandoned cats gather at the front door every day. Meanwhile, mother Tetyana gives piano lessons over the phone, unless the mains is down again. And Alina, the daughter, makes a film. She is not interested in the fighting. Rather, her documentary of those first weeks of war is a minutely detailed portrait of waiting. The eye is on a microcosm where survival is in question, which makes it universal.