A Bit of a Stranger

“Can love exist without freedom? Can there be freedom without love?”. Svitlana, a filmmaker born in Mariupol, spent several years documenting the lives of four generations of women in her family—women painfully stripped of their national identity by Moscow’s imperial politics. The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine brought deep shock to their lives. Svitlana’s daughter Alexandra flees to London with her two-year-old daughter Stephanie, while her mother Valentina remains in Kyiv, keeping contact with Mariupol and her family by phone. Seeking the truth about what really happened in Mariupol, Svitlana discovers how their personal experiences of war intertwine with an urgent search for family history. As events unfold, the three women face difficult questions about the true meaning of patriotism—and whether it is worth dying for. Combining footage from the war with intimate home recordings, the film weaves together the fate of one family with the broader historical and geopolitical context of Russian-Ukrainian relations.

After the screening there will be a meeting with the film director Svitlana Lishchynska.