After over two years of ongoing war, how do the perpetual threats, the explosions, and the death and destruction change people? In Songs of Slow Burning Earth [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Olha Zhurba
fiche film], which screened out of competition at Venice, Ukrainian director Olha Zhurba sets out to portray her country, from the frontline all the way to the other border.

Cineuropa: Here we are in 2024. The war has been going on for quite some time; are we still talking about it enough, or have we got accustomed to it, like your characters?
Olha Zhurba: There are many films about the war, and the film industry has become very cynical about having yet another one. But they have to understand that this will be our reality for many decades into the future. The war is already part of our daily lives, and we, as artists, can't do anything else but portray it.

So we have got too used to it.
I would like Western Europe to understand that we are keeping the peace for people in Europe. We have our own resources, but we need the support, especially military support. This is the first war in which the world has accepted Ukraine as an independent country, as part of Europe. The Russian Federation has a long-term plan for war. It's absolutely certain that if Putin dies, the war won't end, because this machine focused on the militarisation of young generations is enormous.

The movie shows a strong generational divide. There are these elderly people who are traumatised by leaving their homes, and there are kids for whom this becomes a game.
I had to divide it between the kids closer to the frontline, or in occupied and liberated areas, and kids who are living far away. It's a different experience. I went to schools in different regions and talked to different teenagers. Are they preparing for war? I already knew a lot about this militarisation process in the Russian Federation. I was expecting to find the same in Ukrainian schools, but I was very surprised. All the kids talked about was higher education and the jobs they wanted to pick later. They were talking about how the war would end. But the world they live in doesn't give them a choice. Maybe the war will stop, but I know that it will start again.

Your film moves back and forth between two areas: from a place 18 kilometres from the frontline to somewhere over 1,000 kilometres away from it. How was it being that close to the frontline?
The most dangerous place to film was the bread factory in Mykolaiv. It was before the liberation of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. The artillery is unpredictable. With other frontline scenes, we went there, we shot and we came back. But in Mykolaiv, we stayed for two or three weeks. One night, we were filming the night shift at the bread factory. We heard explosions, and when we went back to our place, an exploded shell was in our yard, in the place where we usually parked our car. We were also feeding abandoned cats and dogs in the destroyed villages. When I brought food to the fence, I was suddenly standing right next to an unexploded grenade.

Was there anything that you didn’t want to put in the movie?
I have one taboo: I don't think we have the right to film dead bodies. It is about dignity. It's still a human being. I, for example, don't want somebody to film my body if I die this way.