“Congratulations, you’re a real European now.” This is one of the harshest lines delivered to Vitaly in Camouflage, Ukrainian director Mykyta Gibalenko’s feature film debut which is screening in competition in Venice’s 23rd Giornate degli Autori line-up, and it encapsulates the identity conflict at the heart of this film. In January 2021, our 22-year-old Ukrainian protagonist (Arthur Aliiev) leaves his mother Tetyana (Anna Yaremchuk-Bobalo) and sister Eugenia (Yelyzaveta Tsilyk) to move to Munich. He studies German, joins a theatre workshop and starts building a new life. A little over a year later, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suddenly makes that distance problematic; his private choice creates a family and political rift which can no longer be ignored.

Gibalenko bases his story on a countdown: from the outset, the film specifies that there are 398 days until the invasion. Initially, however, the threat remains in the background, as Vitaly is preparing to leave and his sister is managing a long-distance relationship with a young journalist on the frontline who suddenly disappears. When the film reaches February 2022, the register changes: images of bombings and initial attacks, sourced from the media and digital devices, are incorporated into the narrative without transforming Camouflage into a conventional war film. Distance, in fact, is Gibalenko’s real interest. In Munich, life goes on, while everything is falling apart in Ukraine. The film’s editing conveys these two realities without looking for an easy contrast: European normality becomes increasingly difficult for Vitaly to inhabit.

When Tetyana and Eugenia are forced to join him in Germany, the war definitively enters the domestic space. Living together with young German woman Fiona (Klara Lange), who takes them in,  highlights yet another layer of incommunicability. Fiona offers protection but cannot fully grasp the two women’s trauma; they, in turn, struggle to respond to her hospitality with the gratitude she might expect. “Where were you when I called and needed you?” Eugenia asks Vitaly, shifting the conflict from the geopolitical to the family sphere.

This is where the title, Camouflage, takes on its most precise meaning. Vitaly, who starts going by the name of Vito in Germany, seems intent on constructing a new identity, which is easier to pronounce and perhaps easier to inhabit. But the name becomes a symptom of something deeper: an attempt to blend in, to merge with his surroundings. His integration subsequently becomes a source of tension with his sister: what his family might have considered an individual achievement before the war, might now, post-invasion, be perceived as a form of distance or even betrayal.

Gibalenko, who emigrated to Germany in 2013, brings personal experience to the film which turns into a collective condition. But the screenplay sidesteps attempts to offer a single perspective on Ukrainian identity: Vitaly, Eugenia, Tetyana and Fiona occupy different positions, and their contradictions are the beating heart of the film. More interested in the intimate consequences of war than direct depictions, Camouflage is primarily about the guilt and disorientation felt by those who’ve managed to reach safety. The real frontline, in this instance, doesn’t just cut across Ukraine, it also creates a family divide between those who can try to start over and those who can’t afford to forget.

Camouflage was produced by German outfit kalekone film in co-production with ZDF. International sales are handled by the Paris-based firm MMM Films.