25/08/2026 - Helena Maksyom’s Ukrainian frontline documentary shows us the labours of war through her eyes and her filmic diary as a civilian-turned-soldier

Ukrainian filmmaker Helena Maksyom starts her newest documentary with a set of everyday propositions: she wants to learn French and to play the piano, travel across some of the oceans, take better care of her mother and perhaps “even become a mother herself”. Recording into a mirror, she tells us that the date is 15 February 2022; based on context alone and her sombre tone, we must know what is about to come next.

For its international premiere in the Documentary Competition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, Maksyom’s Don’t Ask Me If I Killed took home a Special Mention of the Special Award for Promoting Gender Equality (see the news) after collecting the top prize in DocuDays’ Docu/Ukraine Competition. Her latest effort is very different from her last, the 2020 documentary Everything Will Not Be Fine (co-directed with Adrian Pîrvu). Over the course of Don’t Ask Me If I Killed, we learn that she joined the war effort at the start of Russia’s invasion, served in numerous combat operations over several years – also as an officer – and was eventually demobilised to the reserves.

While also acting as cinematographer, Maksyom operates with a filmmaker’s instinct and a tinge of irony: wanting to create an exciting, insightful film while having to constantly be watchful of Russian attacks. Her perspective is comprehensive, the camera drawn to the unexpectedly raw labours of war: repetitive actions of military training, elderly locals feeding stray dogs, young soldiers creating makeshift cakes, medical care for wounded soldiers, preparation of machine-gun belts and lugging of mortars to the field. But scattered in and around this life cycle of war are, naturally, moments of levity and deep melancholy.

Maksyom, as a cinematographer and subject herself, occasionally interjects with more personal, diaristic reflections about what she sees, how her behaviour has changed, and the immense emotional toll that it takes to both function and film. As a director, she puts the scenes of fighting in black and white, as if to emotionally distance the viewer from them – a reminder that this is but a small slice of life in conflict. Reflections from her fellow military peers ground us in war as a new normal, yet they also remind us how this state of being is really not truly normal.

Don’t Ask Me If I Killed feels occasionally too fragmented to be distinct in its narrative stance, with little to no sense of chronology or time. Regardless, it’s not hard to imagine this is how Maksyom has experienced war: as a series of mildly isolated memories that linger, with some of the most harrowing ones coming from mundane places.

Don’t Ask Me If I Killed is a Romanian-Dutch-German-Ukrainian production by Adrian Pîrvu, Een van de jongens, Perennial Lens and Jeanne Dovhych, in co-production with ZDF/Das kleine fernsehspiel. First Hand Films is managing its world sales.