“Everything has to burn, so that we live in the future not in the past.” These words come not from the Kremlin but from the elderly mother of filmmaker Svitlana Lishchynska, one of the four female stars (including the director herself) of A Bit of a Stranger, a Berlinale-debuting doc from Ukraine. The film, which fittingly just nabbed the Andriy Matrosov Prize “for its brave examination of identity issues” at Docudays UA, takes us on an intriguing (mind) trip to a Kafkaesque world – specifically the brainwashed headspace of the many Russian-speaking Ukrainians sharing the frontlines with their Russian tormentors.
It’s a place Lishchynska knows far too well, having been born and raised in Mariupol during Soviet times – only to flee to Western-facing Kyiv for work; leaving her young daughter to be brought up in the care of her mum.
And now her adult daughter has her own young daughter. But unlike the careerist – read capitalist – Svitlana, Russian-speaking Alexandra cherishes her role as doting parent to toddler Stephanie. And also the Russian family values she was raised/indoctrinated with in Mariupol. Until a war that she swore would never happen arrives right at the family’s door, forcing her to eventually flee with Steffi to London, where she likewise must confront an existential crisis of her own.
Which, in a twist, is decidedly not the case for Grandma Valentina, who only calls Mariupol home as a result of her family having been forcibly dispossessed by the Soviets and resettled in the city. Sharp and clear-eyed as ever, the septuagenarian can still recall her father’s return from fighting in WWII. He brought her a gift, a necklace, that she’ll now leave behind for the next conquering soldier to once again loot.
As for the director, she ultimately decides to stay in Kyiv in order to be of service to her country – and to herself. For Svitlana “learning to love and learning to be free” are “intertwined.” She posits that the dream of freedom is what makes Ukraine both “strong and weak.” The nation may have shaken off the shackles of the USSR, but the insidious Soviet mindset of country above any individual rights – including the right to be free and to love and be loved – never truly went away.
Which interestingly, may also explain the senseless targeting of civilians overheard in another Berlinale-premiering doc that came to my mind, Oksana Karpovych’s Intercepted, the audio of which is entirely made up of unnerving phone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families back home (that were intercepted by the Ukrainian Secret Service in 2022). To the Russians, women and children are not individual noncombatants, but a collective fascist menace with the potential to report and give away crucial military positions. The enemy forever the enduring power of one.