Symphony Eroica – A film about the Ukrainian tragedy

In memory of all those who lost their lives during the war in Ukraine...
2014 – present

Synopsis

A family of Ukrainians who caught the beginning of the war in Ukraine starts a new life in Berlin. Against the backdrop of a peaceful life in another country, they are still living with memories of the past. Will they be able to cope with their emotions and get back on their feet with renewed vigour?

Director’s Statement

I am originally from Ukraine. On 23.02.2022, I flew to Germany to visit some museums and sights of Berlin. The next morning at 04:00 a.m., my phone rang, and on the other end of the line, my mother's nervous voice answered – «The war has started! We are under attack». I will never forget those words.

From that day on, a new phase in my life began. I hadn't planned for it to happen this way, but I realized that there was no going back home soon.

My hometown is Kharkiv. I shared a flat with my mother and grandfather. Now they were forced to split up with me and stay alone at the mercy of fate in a city that was under daily bombardment. I could hardly call home to find out how my relatives were doing. My mother had been living in the basement of a nearby kindergarten for almost a month, where a bomb shelter had been set up. It was winter. Mum stayed in that basement until she got sick from the cold, and then she stopped hiding at the sound of warning sirens. Grandfather had been sitting on a small chair in a narrow corridor for that whole month. Nerves, hunger, fear... his legs stopped working.

After my mother told me that Grandpa was almost dying, I was dumbfounded. The desire to evacuate my relatives to Berlin was unquenchable. Day after day, I persuaded them to leave the city, but because my grandfather was in a bad condition, it was quite difficult to carry it out. Finally, my mother decided to muster all her strength and, roughly speaking, on her shoulders to get my grandfather out of Kharkiv.

The journey towards Berlin lasted three days. I had prepared accommodation for them in advance: the church helped to house them in a semi-basement under a neighboring building. Grandpa was now confined to his chair, and his only view of the outside world was a small window facing the courtyard. To go outside, he had to overcome the impossible task of going up the stairs. But Grandpa had a burning desire to learn to walk again, to exercise his legs, and to go out on his own.

While my mother was doing the housework and taking her first walks in the city on her own, putting aside all fearful thoughts of war, my grandfather have been training his legs to walk.

Then I remember very vividly the Easter holiday when we all gathered around the same dinner table as a family.

Walking down one of Berlin's main streets, time after time I saw flowers right in the middle of the pedestrian area: first a bouquet, then two, then more. I immediately thought of my favorite field of sunflowers behind the house in my hometown of Kharkiv (this was part of the city that was damaged the most). The mere thought that I would never be able to go back and walk in those fields, as I did before, terrifies me...

As time went by, children's toys and drawings were added to these flowers in the middle of the street... Each time this memorial got bigger and bigger until it was so big that every passerby paid attention to it. The toys were covered in blood... flowers were standing nearby, and candles were burning. All that sounded in my head were gunshots, shells bursting, and children screaming and crying. The children’s drawings and toys bear witness to the grief and the violence suffered by Ukrainians.

I made this film as the summation of my memories, and my perceptions of the war I caught abroad. This film is about what happened directly or indirectly to my relatives, and my performance of the piano pieces is my direct reflection of my state of mind.

The memorial of flowers and children's toys is getting bigger and bigger to this day, and the war in Ukraine is still going on. Tomorrow there will probably be either a new toy or a new child's drawing pulled out from under the rubble of a destroyed multi-story building. People and children keep on suffering, crying, and screaming for help...

I hope that these cries will make everyone in this world think about the grief that war brings; about the pain and loss that people are experiencing. The war in Ukraine is not just a distant conflict, but a human tragedy that had affected the lives of millions of people.

Through my film, I hoped to connect with others who had experienced the trauma of war and to offer a message of hope and resilience. Now we all are being united by the impassioned performance of our artists praying for peace.

Видео Symphony Eroica – A film about the Ukrainian tragedy канала Oleksandr Kryvets