A War in The East
For Le Monde
In a hospital in Kyiv, a mother is at her son’s bedside; she has been there for three months; he was wounded in shellfire and his leg was amputated. In what remains of Borodyanka, an elderly woman is asking for directions; she is lost in her own home town. In Lviv, the curator of a museum is contemplating the empty walls. And a mother weeps for her son, her second to die in combat.
Here it is not just land that is lost; it is an entire country, its identity, heritage, and economy. Some people have had no other choice than to flee; others have chosen to remain. Life is now in underground shelters, in trains and tunnels, to the sound of sirens as death comes from the sky, and the trauma of war permeates every thought. “I saw a video showing Russian soldiers engulfed in flames, and I laughed. For a moment there I didn’t know who I was; everything had changed. I would never have thought I could behave like that.” Alina, who lives in Kyiv, was telling her story. They are my endeavor to show the everyday experience of war, to show the impact it has on the people, presenting a documentary record of their life which, while torn apart, still continues. We realize that war is more than just weapons and destruction, that it has an impact on the lives of millions, some of them trapped in their homes, their cities, their country. At a time when news reporting has been distorted and instrumentalized, it is essential to show the real experience of war.
