Latest news with #Timestamp
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Ukrainians have been stripped of illusion of control' — Filmmaker Kateryna Gornostai on Russia's war, cinema and reclaiming the narrative
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, film director Kateryna Gornostai found herself questioning whether she would continue working. "I had this feeling that life — at least professionally — had come to an end," she says. "Who needed directors or screenwriters, then? At most, volunteers were needed, but hardly anyone involved in filmmaking." The urgency of documenting the war soon became clear, but emotionally picking up a camera didn't come easily. The 36-year-old filmmaker struggled with fear and doubt, knowing any shot she filmed could be her last. "It felt scary that you're filming, and these could be your last shots because now a missile will hit here. And that's all that will be left of you." Yet, she did return. In 2023, Gornostai began working on her first film following the start of the full-scale war. Her latest documentary "Timestamp," was screened at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival — making her the first Ukrainian director in nearly three decades to compete for the Golden Bear. The last was Kira Muratova's "Three Stories" in 1997. Gornostai attended the Berlinale only briefly, arriving just for the film's screening on Feb. 20, days after giving birth to her son. "Timestamp" follows students and teachers across different parts of Ukraine, including cities regularly pounded with Russian missiles and drones, showing what everyday school life looks like in the war-torn country. The film is both intimate and unflinching, offering a glimpse into how kids endure the hardship of growing up under constant bombardment. Gornostai dedicated the film to her younger brother Maksym, killed in action in 2023 while she was still filming. On June 11, the movie premiered in Ukraine. "It should be both fun and sad at the same time," she told the Kyiv Independent days before the screening. "That's what we hope for." Read also: Author Yuri Andrukhovych on Ukrainian dissident art in Soviet times Themes of school and adolescence are in the spotlight of Gornostai's work, with autobiographical and personal elements running through it. Just over a month before Russia launched its all-out invasion, Gornostai's debut feature film "Stop-Zemlia" premiered in Ukraine in January 2022. The movie earned recognition both at home and abroad, winning the Crystal Bear in the Berlinale Generation 14plus section, a category for movies that explore the life of children and teenagers. "Timestamp" has the same focus, yet different story, showing a new reality that Ukrainian education is facing — remote learning, damaged infrastructure, constant air raids, studying in the subway, and the psychological trauma of kids at war. One of the most important scenes in the film for Gornostai is the funeral of the school principal in the town of Romny, Sumy Oblast, killed in a Russian drone strike on the local school in August 2023. It's the only moment in the film where Russia is directly accused of aggression against Ukraine, the phrase spoken by a priest. "Because already, so much pain has touched nearly every person. Everyone has experienced some kind of loss — from their homes to their loved ones. Many have lost the most precious thing of all: life itself." "This school didn't live to see its hundredth anniversary, which would've been next year. It survived World War II, but it didn't survive this war," Gornostai says. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, around 3,500 educational institutions have been damaged, and around 400 completely destroyed, Deputy Education Minister Yevhen Kudriavets said in late February of 2024. The Euromaidan Revolution was a turning point for Ukraine — and for a new generation of filmmakers, including Kateryna Gornostai. She was studying in Moscow at the time of the Maidan protests in 2013 but returned to Kyiv to document the unfolding events. "We all started making documentaries that explored civil society," she says. "It was a moment of growth — personal and professional. You're filming real events but also thinking about how they'll come together as a story." She made two documentaries during that time — "Maidan is everywhere" and "Euromaidan." Rough Cut, of which she was a co-author. While many turned their cameras toward the front lines of Russia's war in Ukraine's east that followed, Gornostai chose a different path. "I'm very scared," she admits. "Even on Maidan, I couldn't stand between the Berkut (riot police) and the protesters like some of our colleagues. I stayed in the rear, and I remember thinking — there are stories here, too." More than a decade later, she sees that moment as the foundation of a powerful wave of Ukrainian cinema. "(The Euromaidan Revolution became) a separation from that post-Soviet, Eastern European blend — because it used to feel like our cinema was perceived as part of Russian cinema prior. During the interview, Gornostai's tone sharpens when the conversation turns to Russia's cultural influence. For decades, Moscow cast a long shadow over Ukrainian cinema. Even after Ukraine's independence, Russian money and distribution networks kept a grip on the country's film industry. That influence didn't vanish with the invasion — it just evolved. Since the start of the war against Ukraine in 2014, Russia's film industry has shifted to propaganda. Yet, Russian films still screen at major international festivals, and Russian actors who support the war against Ukraine continue to win awards. "Movies are just one small part of a much bigger (Russian) cultural push," Gornostai says. "In fact, there is a huge campaign that has lasted for many, many decades, involving enormous financial resources, all aimed at creating an image (abroad). This is something that we (in Ukraine) have not done. And what we are trying to do now is to build some kind of postcolonial lens through which Ukraine should now be seen." 'Most of the films that have been screened somewhere weren't made thanks to the circumstances in Ukraine, but rather in spite of them.' Abroad, she says, fascination with Russian culture persists, while the understanding of Ukraine still lags behind. "The fact that there are signs of genocide committed by Russia and that the Holodomor could have already been recognized as a genocide a century back — very few people know that abroad. But they do know the great Russian ballet, literature — all those things that were deliberately built up, promoted, and became part of a certain stereotype." According to Gornostai, for a long time, there was a prevailing belief in Ukraine that the answer to Russian propaganda should be counter-propaganda. But she thinks that Ukraine should be creating high-quality cinema, not propaganda of its own. "We simply need something completely different that will make us stand out and represent ourselves on the international stage. I think quality is very important now in this world," she adds. Gornostai believes that the current crisis in Ukrainian cinema stems more from domestic policy than the war itself. Even before Russia's full-scale invasion, government inaction had weakened the industry. Following the invasion, funding for the State Film Agency was slashed. In 2025, only Hr 204.1 million ($4.9 million) is allocated, nearly 70% less than in 2024. 'Most of the films that have been screened somewhere weren't made thanks to the circumstances in Ukraine, but rather in spite of them,' says Gornostai. 'They were funded either by private money, individual initiatives, or through international grants, producers, or festival pitching awards that made production possible. Documentary filmmaking can survive in this way.' A standout example is '20 Days in Mariupol' by director Mstyslav Chernov, which documented the Russian siege of the city in 2022 and won Ukraine's first Oscar in 2024 for Best Documentary. 'This is a huge victory for the truth itself. It preserves and engraves the history of Mariupol and no one will be able to distort it anymore,' Gornostai says. Gornostai's new feature film, "Antonivka," is expected to be released in 2027. Set in the aftermath of Ukraine's victory in the war, the film explores death. "Even when this war ends, it won't truly be over," says Gornostai. "Because already, so much pain has touched nearly every person. Everyone has experienced some kind of loss — from their homes to their loved ones. Many have lost the most precious thing of all: life itself." She believes that once the war ends, there will be a difficult period of collective reckoning — a time when people begin to process their grief. Her film, she says, is an attempt to open that conversation. "There's this ephemeral law that time heals. It works very strangely. It doesn't really heal. That's not the whole phrase," Gornostai says. "Time simply passes, and it's as if layers of new experiences start to build up after that very significant moment in your life — for example, the death of someone close to you. These layers grow, and it's as if they gradually distance you from that moment." "That's the subject I'm grappling with now — and it's a subject many others are facing too," she continues. "How do we grieve that kind of loss? How do we reflect on it? The film deals with many kinds of deaths, but at its core, one of its central elements is the acceptance of your own death — the one that awaits you." One of the central figures in the film is an elderly man who lived through famine and war. As Gornostai speaks, she recalls her two grandfathers who passed away. "Ukrainians have now been stripped of the illusion of control," the filmmaker says. "But still, I'd like to have the privilege of dying at a time when I know that my family will remain here, that people speaking the Ukrainian language will remain here, and that there is peace and life on this land. And that I am leaving it behind. Not dying in a moment of total turbulence and uncertainty about what will happen tomorrow — as if I'm leaving everyone in the middle of that." "So this is another privilege: a privilege to die in a free country. And this is one of the motivations for making this film." Read also: Wondering where to start with Dostoevsky? Try his Ukrainian contemporaries instead Hello there! This is Kateryna Denisova, the author of this piece. As Russia's war against Ukraine grinds on, Ukrainian filmmakers like Kateryna Gornostai are capturing stories that reveal the reality on the ground. I hope many people will watch these films and learn more about Ukrainian cinema and its directors through interviews like this one. Your support helps make this work possible. Please consider contributing to sustain our reporting. We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
New York Times
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At New Directors/New Films, the Faces Tell the Story
In 'Familiar Touch,' Kathleen Chalfant plays a woman whose inner life alternately burns bright and suddenly dims. Her character, Ruth, has an inviting smile and natural physical grace, though at times she falters midstep. A former cook and a cookbook author now in her 80s, she lives alone in a pleasant modern home cluttered with shelves of books and just-so personal touches that convey the passage of time in a full, well-lived life. Ruth seems thoroughly at ease in her own skin when she first appears, bustling in her kitchen. She's preparing lunch for a visitor who, you soon learn, is the son she no longer recognizes. Written and directed by Sarah Friedland, 'Familiar Touch' is the opening-night selection Wednesday in the New Directors/New Films festival and a terrific leadoff for the annual event. Ruth's openly loving and hurting son soon hurries her to his car — she thinks that they're en route to a hotel — and into an assisted living facility. There, she settles into a new reality as she struggles with her memory, connects with other residents and finds support among the staff. In Chalfant's mesmerizing, eloquently expressive face, you see both Ruth's piercing loss and a soul safely settling into the eternal now as her past, present and future fade away. Chalfant's is just one of the memorable faces in the annual New Directors/New Films series, a collaboration of Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art that gathers movies from around the world. Established in 1972, the event was designed to draw attention to the kind of nonmainstream work that didn't always make it into commercial theaters. That's one reason that I always look forward to it; the other is that its programmers take film seriously. That's clear throughout the lineup, which could use more genre variety, yet, at its finest, offers you personal, thoughtful, imaginative, adult work of the kind that plays in art houses and on more adventurous streamers. These are movies made and chosen by people who love the art. That love is also evident in the great diversity of men, women and children in the program, a variety that underscores the centrality of the human face as the great cinematic landscape. This year, partly because of the dystopian chatter about A.I., I was struck anew by the deep, signifying power of smiles, frowns and sneers, and how watching movies usually means watching other people. No matter if their directors tug at your heart (as in the documentary 'Timestamp') or keep you at an intellectual distance (the drama 'Drowning Dry'), these movies present an astonishment of humanity. In selection after selection, old and young visages, some untroubled and others wrenched in pain, bring you face-to-face with the world. That world is rarely more anguished than it is in 'Timestamp.' Directed by Kateryna Gornostai, this Ukrainian heartbreaker offers a nonfiction portrait of the nation through its children. Violence is ever-present — in safety precautions, ruined buildings, worried adults — but mercifully there are no hospital scenes or screaming kids, just sorrow. In the northeast city of Kharkiv near the Russian border, cherubs attend a school in an underground subway station while in the central city of Cherkasy, high schoolers prepare for graduation, a rite of passage that becomes progressively melancholic. Not all these children will reach adulthood. We are so habituated to watching large, looming faces — thanks in part to TVs love of yammering bobbleheads and now smartphones — that their onscreen absence can be striking and even disorienting. That wasn't always the case: In early cinema, such close-ups didn't necessarily function the way we're accustomed to now. The historian Eileen Bowser, for instance, points out that the 1907 comedy 'Laughing Gas,' about a woman who goes to the dentist, opens with a close-up of her wincing with a bandage around her head and ends with another of her laughing and bandage free. The close-ups amplify the story, yet in contrast to the way filmmakers soon began to employ them, they're not part of the actual narrative. The faces that beguiled early-cinema audiences begot the old star system and its striking, primped and retouched glamour pusses. Independent film tends to foreground more ostensibly authentic faces, but even these need to signify. A pretty face can by turns seduce, distract or terrify, one reason that the lovely, fiercely eyebrowed actress Dolores Oliverio makes such a formidable central attraction in Laura Casabé's sly, delectably creepy Argentine freakout, 'The Virgin of the Quarry Lake.' Oliverio's brooding looks speak volumes as does the lightly rubbery visage of the gay dad in Fabian Stumm's German comedy 'Sad Jokes' and the vulnerably open one of a bullied Hungarian boy in Balint Szimler's 'Lesson Learned.' In Rohan Parashuram Kanawade's gentle, low-key charmer 'Cactus Pears,' a gay Indian man (a quietly sympathetic Bhushaan Manoj) travels back to his childhood home and reconnects with an old lover who's had a life our hero didn't have, made choices he didn't know he could make. You watch the protagonist watch others and, as you do, discover how he sees himself. You don't learn nearly as much, by contrast, about the characters who drift in and out of Alexandra Simpson's 'No Sleep Till,' an engrossing, teasingly fragmented portrait of different Floridians readying themselves (or not!) for a coming hurricane. As palm trees shudder against the ominous sky, these weather-watchers seem like emissaries from the apocalypse. The Lithuanian director Laurynas Bareisa doesn't explain much in his intriguing puzzler 'Drowning Dry.' Instead, he builds the story's tension steadily with unsettling surveillance-like shots (who's watching whom?) and by keeping you at a remove from the characters. Although he sprinkles in a few close-ups of faces early on, most offer just partial views or are almost too teasingly brief for you to get a bead on the different personalities. Deep in the story, though, amid unfolding tragedies, he cuts to a woman (Gelmine Glemzaite) while she's setting a table. She seems happily preoccupied with her task, yet as Bareisa holds on her face and she turns her profile to the camera, the pieces of this fractured story begin sliding more clearly into place and you see what happiness looks like before it disappears. There are notably few early close-ups of faces in the exuberant, formally assured 'Mad Bills to Pay (Or Destiny, dile que no soy malo),' a festival standout. Fast-paced and crackling with energy, it tracks the adventures of Rico (Juan Collado, wonderful), a 19-year-old Bronx charisma bomb trying to figure out life. So it's telling that he looks asleep in the first shot, a nice setup for his coming of age. Amid the loving, at times combative clamor of his home life, Rico tries to do the right thing (Spike Lee's influence is conspicuous), makes bad and funny choices, and wins your heart. It isn't until the end, when reality and adulthood hit, that the director Joel Alfonso Vargas — remember this New York kid's name — truly narrows in on Rico's soft, tender face and you see what it looks like when a child needs to become a man.
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Timestamp' Review: Powerful Ukrainian Documentary Captures Both Pain and Resilience of Children During Wartime
When one pictures a war, it's mostly scenes of blood, guts and glory. But wars, including major ones like the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, don't usually happen throughout the whole land. There are established frontlines and battlefields, buffer zones and areas that have been temporarily evacuated. Meanwhile, the rest of the country tries to go on living: The elderly stay at home, adults head off to work and children keep going to school. The latter group are the focus of Kateryna Gornostai's powerful new documentary, Timestamp (Strichka Chasu), which chronicles how Ukraine's educational system functions in the midst of a full-scale invasion. Capturing scenes of school life on all levels, from kindergartners all the way to high-school seniors, the movie highlights the resilience of students who continue to press on as their country defends itself, and teachers trying to make the most of a catastrophic situation. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Holding Liat' Review: Emotional Darren Aronofsky-Produced Israeli Hostage Doc Doesn't Shy Away From a Complex Situation 'Kontinental '25' Review: Romanian Auteur Radu Jude Delivers Another Caustic Modern Morality Tale 'After This Death' Review: Mía Maestro and Lee Pace in a Dud Follow-Up to Lucio Castro's Transfixing 'End of the Century' Eschewing classic talking-head interviews or archive footage from news reports, Gornostai's approach recalls the work of Frederick Wiseman and other documentarians whose methods are much more about showing than telling. While onscreen titles detail the names of cities and their respective distances from the front, the rest of Timestamp simply immerses us in various settings, observing kids of different ages doing the things kids tend to do in school: study, play, learn, hang out and get bored. But nothing is normal in a country mobilized for battle, and Gornostai reveals the different ways Ukrainians have adapted since Russia invaded back in February 2022. Classes closer to battle lines are taught via Zoom, while those farther away can go on like before, though they often get interrupted by air raid sirens driving everyone underground. In one sequence, an art teacher has transformed a basement into a colorful studio for students learning to paint and draw. Elsewhere, an entire subway platform has become a makeshift schoolhouse, complete with blackboards, desks and learning material. Because the war has been going on so long, the children appear to be unfazed, though every so often we focus on a kid who's clearly been traumatized. In one unforgettable scene, a little girl heads into her school library for a reading session, only to break down when she sees a photo of her dead father alongside portraits of other fallen soldiers. And yet minutes later she's managed to pick out a book and get to work. Timestamp reveals many things during its captivating two hours, and one of them is that kids — even those who've been through hell — have short memories, which is what helps them to keep going. As for the teenagers, they're growing up in a war-torn country where they may be next in line for the draft. High schoolers are taught how to fire rifles or apply tourniquets to wounds — the film's title refers to a timestamp measuring how long human tissue has been deprived of blood — and many see a future in which they'll soon be fighting themselves. But they're also just trying to be regular teens, making TikTok videos with friends or practicing dance routines for a graduation ceremony that closes the movie. Gornostai and cameraman Oleksandr Roshchyn capture these moments in gracefully composed widescreen shots filled with youthful bodies, whether its preschoolers scurrying down to a bomb shelter or adolescents shooting hoops in a gym that's been partially destroyed. The orchestral and choral score by Alexey Shmurak adds an epic quality to the imagers, as if we were watching the birth of a new nation rising like a phoenix from the ashes. Indeed, there's an undoubtedly nationalistic aspect to Timestamp, fostered by scenes of students singing patriotic hymns or saluting the dead during moments of silence, as well as in the lessons teachers give them about Ukrainians bravely resisting Russian invaders. (One can only imagine what's being taught in schools on the opposing side.) Such patriotism, whether you like it or not, is another facet of a long and devastating conflict that has altered so many lives when it hasn't completely wrecked them. And yet Gornostai's absorbing portrait is ultimately one of promise: of the durability of children who keep persisting despite awful circumstances, and of a time when they'll no longer have to do so. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The Best Anti-Fascist Films of All Time Dinosaurs, Zombies and More 'Wicked': The Most Anticipated Movies of 2025 From 'A Complete Unknown' to 'Selena' to 'Ray': 33 Notable Music Biopics
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Timestamp' Review: Kateryna Gornostai's Extraordinary Doc Takes Us Inside The War On Ukraine And Its Children
There can't possibly be a more timely film in the Berlinale lineup this year than Kateryna Gornostai's Timestamp, an extraordinary deep-cover documentary about the effects of war in everyday Ukraine that, despite the harsh front-page relevance of its subject matter, has a beautiful old-fashioned formalism in its editing and composition. But like the wartime films of Humphrey Jennings — notably Fires Were Started and London Can Take It! — it is also a celebration of national character, depicting a generation that has only known conflict and yet, somehow, refuses to be defined by it. Walter Salles' Oscar nominee I'm Still Here dramatizes a similar story of resistance, but Timestamp is all the more remarkable for capturing the real thing, and in real time. Shot between March 2023 and June 2024 Gornostai's film takes us on a whirlwind tour of Ukraine, to towns and cities both near to and far from the front line. The number of destinations we visit is dizzying given the sheer size of Ukraine (and the blitz of very brief intertitles can be distracting), but it soon becomes clear that this is a very large country tied together in the most tragic way conceivable. In fact, the opening moments play out like an elegy for the whole nation: a school boarded up, with empty corridors and empty classrooms. What ought to be the safest, most sacrosanct place in any sane society has been trashed — and to what end? More from Deadline Berlinale Grappling With Fresh Israel-Palestine Controversy After Hong Kong Filmmaker Is Investigated By Police For Speech Exploring 'Other People's Money': Jan Schomburg Talks Tax Fraud Drama Series Ahead Of Berlin Film Festival World Premiere Berlin Film Festival 2025: All Of Deadline's Movie Reviews But the school is not entirely empty, and this is the world that Timestamp is about to take us into, a place where, astonishingly, life goes on. We never see the war, but we often hear it; very early on, a children's pageant is disrupted by an air-raid siren, and the youngest are taken down into a shelter. Gornostai's camera follows them in, and the scenes are unbelievable: teachers desperately leading singalongs to take everyone's minds off what might be happening outside, and the children merrily joining in. Only the terrified face of a crying little girl reflects the enormity of what this all represents. But this isn't even the half of it. Though it deals with the aftermath of airstrikes — 'This is our kitchen,' a woman tells us from the blackened wreckage of a civilian housing block — Timestamp is more concerned with the way war destroys innocence as surely as it tears apart bricks and mortar. We see teenagers handling firearms, being taught to use tourniquets (which gives the film its rather oblique title) and lectured on the hazards of 'bleeding out'. Smaller children, meanwhile, are taught what to pack in their overnight bags in case of evacuation — and, more frighteningly, to stay away from discarded toys that may have been boobytrapped with bombs and mines. Interestingly, though there is a great love of country here — Gornostai's camera lingers on a pair of blue and yellow socks, and during one of its many festive scenes shows a little boy in a Spider-Man outfit rubbing shoulders with little girls in national costume — there is more of a sense of national pride than ironclad patriotism. Teachers persistently warn their pupils against joining the military, and some have even written a passionately pacifist song that goes, 'I hate you, war… I don't want to shoot at people… I beg you, don't play war.' In fact, even a visiting soldiers paints a harrowing picture of life during wartime, days, weeks and months spent freezing, starving and loading up corpses for burial. In spite of all this, Gornostai paints a surprisingly optimistic portrait, building towards a prom party where a bunch of teenage girls finish up their funny little TikTok movie with an Abba soundtrack. By this time, we feel as welcome in their world as the director clearly does, and the footage she gets is as close as you could possibly find to a NatGeo study of human wildlife (Nicolas Philibert's intimate 2002 film Etre et Avoir must surely have been an influence here). It sometimes meanders, but then, that sometimes feels like it's part of the point: when things become too comfortable, too cozy, too normal, a siren sounds and reminds us where we are. Should the war in Ukraine seem too far away for your sympathy, Timestamp is a reminder — and a warning — that it can come to all of us. Title: TimestampFestival: Berlin (Competition)Director-screenwriter: Kateryna Gornostai Distributor: Best Friend ForeverRunning time: 2 hrs 5 mins Best of Deadline The 25 Highest-Grossing Animated Films Of All Time At The Box Office Everything We Know About '1923' Season 2: Release Date, Cast & More A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media
