Stronger than Arms

Animals in War is a poignant anthology film inspired by true stories of animals impacted by the war in Ukraine. A collaboration between Ukrainian and international artists — including actor and activist Sean Penn — the film is a haunting yet captivating call for global awareness and empathy.

Twelve young filmmakers made this the guiding principle of the featured documentary film. They mingle amongst the demonstrators on Independence Square and in the Donetsk region, shooting a "Chronicle of Civil Protest", a kaleidoscope of voices, opinions and events which bears witness to the circumstances surrounding solidarity and struggle. The viewer observes the Ukrainians at first hand, experiencing how a hard-pressed society becomes more militant and slides ever deeper into the abyss of civil war.

Exchange of prisoners of war. In the hospital courtyard, hundreds of relatives have gathered — far more than the number of freed Ukrainian service members. Who will embrace their loved one today, and who will have to keep waiting? The first moments of reunion become the climax, as people and viewers share anticipation.

The artists Zhanna Kadyrova and Denys Ruban spent two weeks in the basement of their house, fleeing from the rocket attacks and sabotage groups of the occupiers that were flooding the outskirts of Kyiv at the time, and then decided to evacuate to western Ukraine. Local residents of one of the Zakarpattia villages sheltered them in a picturesque house on a hillside, next to a river. Doing what you know and love for the benefit of Ukraine is the best thing an artist can do in times of war. This is how the Palianytsia project was born - a series of objects made of stones cut by a mountain river. Zhanna sells them to patrons and galleries and uses the proceeds to buy bulletproof vests, radios, thermal imagers and other things our soldiers need. Before she sends her ‘loaves’ to Venice for the Biennale, Zhanna holds an exhibition in the village where she now lives, so that the people who have taken her in can be the first to see her art.

Through its two parallel plotlines, the film follows the exploits of a volunteer evacuation team in the front lines of Eastern Ukraine, led by young, precociously stoic Anton, as well as the wartime daily lives and unlikely friendship of two elderly women - pragmatic Zinaida and dreamy, starry-eyed Taisia - who decided to stay at their homes in the now de-occupied Chernihiv region. While Anton faces the most visceral horrors of war on a daily basis during his team's urgent, desperate attempts to rescue the most vulnerable, who are often reluctant or unwilling to leave, Zinaida and Taisia seek to pursue any forms of resistance within their power - from praying and writing poetry to hiding historic plaque and reporting intelligence to the Ukrainian military.

Tymofiy Sautkin, a potter from Kyiv, is trying to escape from daily routine and his quarrelsome wife. He finds himself on an island, where he sculpts an ideal woman out of clay. However, time passes, and he comes back home…