26/12/2025 - In this short, Ukrainian Mykyta Lyskov invites us into the apartment-block home of a struggling family before thoughts of war intrude

Tempting as the title may sound, Kyiv Cake in fact does everything to ruin our appetite. Mykyta Lyskov’s collaboration with Estonia's Eesti Joonisfilm production company depicts the degrading conditions of a Ukrainian family struggling to make ends meet. While there is hardly any fun in the material, the animation’s lowbrow, almost childish style is paired with inventive imagery – making it a true trash gem in the main competition of Ljubljana's Animateka festival.

The action begins early in the morning, as a worn-out father cautiously navigates his routine in the mouldy rooms of a rundown apartment, careful not to wake his wife or their newborn son. For Lyskov, the devil is truly in the details, as he spares no effort in uniquely anthropomorphising every corner of this rotten world.

With aria-singing tapestries and monstrously sharp-toothed electric-meters, the film bizarrely illustrates the characters' grotesque bargaining with bills and their daily struggle to survive. Slowly, we come to understand the ugly and intentionally unappealing characters – their problems will surely be familiar to anyone who grew up in Central or Eastern Europe.

Kyiv Cake gets the most creative when condensing entire destinies into its 22-minute runtime.
With almost no dialogue, visual metaphors suggest the limited opportunities awaiting the family members: the father leaves (presumably for a Western job to maintain financial support), while the son grows up to become an unemployed vandal living with his mother.

Darkly humorous symbolism conveys that the warm safety usually associated with home has never existed in this world. Then we realise that even in this imperfect and unenviable life, there are values to lose: the outbreak of war shifts priorities and redefines the struggle for survival.

As Lyskov successfully captures how utterly unprepared many must have felt on 24 February 2022, the imaginative ideas and motifs that had been so dominant in the film until then gradually recede. What had been convincing through its comic touch until this point now introduces an emotional drama in the final part.

Having found the proper gravity of the subject matter, the cartoon tells its story with an engaging lightness. Through visual gags and an oddly dark sense of humour, Lyskov portrays everyday life using playful ways to capture our attention. Without any sweet coating but expertly baked, Kyiv Cake is easily consumable, even if it leaves a somewhat stomach-churning aftertaste.