From her first, autobiographical film Alisa in Warland (2015), to last year’s My Dear Theo [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], Ukrainian director Alisa Kovalenko has been steadily making her name in documentary cinema as one of the most direct and astute observers and first-person witnesses of what her country has been going through. She’s known as the first Ukrainian survivor of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) to have publicly spoken out after the crime she survived in 2014 while volunteering in Donbas. Fittingly, in her fifth film, Traces, which she co-directed with Marysia Nikitiuk (When the Trees Fall [+lire aussi :
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interview : Marysia Nikitiuk
fiche film]) and which has just world-premiered in Berlinale’s Panorama line-up, Kovalenko carefully and delicately refines her approach.

Several survivors from Donbas, Kherson and Kyiv speak of their ordeals in the documentary, but the key protagonist is Iryna Dovhan, who founded the Ukrainian branch of SEMA, the Global Network of Victims and Survivors to End Wartime Sexual Violence. Expressed by way of a voice-over as she tends to the plants in her garden, Dovhan’s own personal testimony opens the film, and we immediately understand where Kovalenko and Nikitiuk are leading us. The images counterpointing the survivors’ stories range from directly symbolic - such as a field of dead sunflowers, a burning tree or a destroyed school building - to tactile - such as hands touching bullet holes in a wall or crafting a clay sculpture - to shots which contrast the brutality of what these women have been through, with rain gently tapping on a patio or the sun shining through foliage as it slowly sets.

We often see the protagonists sitting in the shadows or lying on a bed in the dark, usually in medium shots, as their voice-overs relay their experiences. But these stories don’t tend to contain too many shocking details. It’s the war aspect of sexual violence that the filmmaker focuses on, and how it’s used systematically as a weapon. The fact that all six of the women who speak in the film – Iryna, Tetiana, Mefodiivna, Galyna, Olha and Nina – are middle-aged or older certainly points to the fact that these cases of rape - always carried out under direct threat from weapons (the significance of the physical use of a rifle barrel is hard to overstate) and predominantly committed by men young enough to be their sons - are definitely not coincidental.

The second half of the film focuses on how Iryna, Tetiana and Mefodiivna are helping victims who aren’t even aware of the medical and psychological help that might be available. Traces is a fitting title: over and above anything else, it’s about the protagonists healing and regaining agency and dignity as women and human beings. Another trace, a consequence of her work, is the cancer that Iryna is fighting.

Mariia Nesterenko and Maciej Amilkiewicz’s sound design and Wojciech Frycz’s score do a lot of heavy lifting and are often mutually indistinguishable. At times, we hear explosions or heavy doors locking, low in the mix against voice-overs, while the gentle strings-and-organ music is increasingly punctuated by echoing sighs and cries by female vocalists: an end swell which builds towards a full-orchestra crescendo.

Traces was produced by Ukraine’s 2Brave Productions, in co-production with Poland’s Message Film and in association with Arte France, SEMA Ukraine and Dr. Denis Mukwege Foundation. France’s Stranger Films Sales are managing international rights.