While studying in Belgium, Daryna Mamaisur witnesses Russia’s attack on her home country Ukraine from a distance. It is getting warmer, the chestnut trees are already in bloom, here in Brussels as well as there in Kyiv. Because she cannot find the words, she makes a film that records this spring – in the distance and nearby. She starts a visual correspondence with Tanya in Kyiv who would rather talk about an argument with her partner or the singing of the birds than the droning of the bombs.
The filmmaker, too, is searching for a way of speaking commensurate with her helplessness and shock. She takes voice lessons and interweaves the shots of recital and vocal exercises with the observations she exchanges with her friend. She directs our attention to the fragility of everyday life – and the experience of war that weighs down even the most relaxed, banal moments.

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.