"Ukraine is like porcelain, easy to break but impossible to destroy."
This is said by SlavaLeontyev, a Ukrainian ceramic artist who signs his works with his wife Anya, and at the same time a Special Forces instructor who teaches enlisted civilians how to use weapons, also leading a unit in Kharkiv.
A daily story of war and resistance also through art, told by Porcelain War, a documentary directed by Leontyev himself together with Brendan Bellomo, which had its world debut at the Sundance Film Festival where it has just won one of the main prizes, the Grand Jury prize, for the Us Documentary section.
The non-fiction film enters the lives of Slava, Anya and their painter and photographer friend, as well as comrade in arms in the Special Forces, Andrey Stefanov (he also acted as an operator for the documentary), who after the Russian invasion decided not to leave the country, but to stay and fight, through multiple paths of resistance.
"Together with my wife who is also a producer, Aniela Sidorska, we had contacted Anya and Slava via the internet, before the war, for another project - explains Bellomo at Sundance, where all the protagonists of the film managed to arrive, including Frodo, the schnauzer of the Ukrainian couple who shares every moment of the day with them -. Then when there was the invasion and they told us that they had no intention of leaving, we understood together that that was the story to tell".
The film, which was possible to shoot thanks to many volunteers who brought the necessary equipment to Ukraine, also bringing medicines and other resources for the population, combines the violence of war with oases of beauty, represented by the small porcelain creatures linked to the animal world that Slavae Anya still creates.
He models them, she paints them, managing to tell real stories on the surface, with characters that blend reality and dream.
Journeys that were rendered into animation in the film, in which war also entered, but always with the intention of maintaining a light of hope.
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