Original subtitles

My name is Nadia.

I am from Ukraine.

Back home, winters are dark and cold.

I prefer to escape somewhere warm...

...and return in the spring, when life wakes up again.

This year was different.

It s fucking hell!

The winter of 2022 never ended.

I did not want to make a war film

Every winter I go to Dahab in the Middle East...

...to avoid the gloomy skies in Ukraine.

I love the sun, the sea, the animals.

Hello!

Wherever you go, there is a dog waiting for you to pet it.

Many dogs.

Your hands are always busy.

This is Ilija, my husband. Ilija, hajde... get up.

Are you going to sleep?

You don t seem to be getting up. -I am. -So look at me!

Are you even there? Who am i talking to? Get up!

Ilija is not as excited about Dahab as I am.

But there is one thing he definitely appreciates.

A gorgeous tamarind tree.

At our place in Kiev, we also have a tamarind.

It is the most beautiful and the most fragile of our home plants.

Every time we leave, someone has to take care of it instead.

Ilija misses our tamarind a lot.

I miss it too.

Otherwise, Dahab is perfect for me.

It used to be.

On February 24, I woke up from my mother's call.

She sent me a video of my hometown being bombed.

Shit, there s a fuckload of them there.

Russia had started a full-scale invasion of my country.

Moron, a moron you are! Idiot, a fucking killer!

All of my family, friends and colleagues were in Ukraine.

I was away, unable to help.

Can you see how many people came out?

Dahab was safe, but it felt like prison.

I so wanted to help, but there was so little I could do.

I felt guilty, lonely and endlessly helpless.

The only thing that remained was the news from home.

An increased level of cesium is found in Kijev.

A �ta to zna�i? -To zna�i da...

To zna�i da... Mogu�e da dolazi iz �ernobila.

Mogu�e, zbog vatre.

Who the fuck knows what these Russians are doing there.

One of those nights I had a dream.

I saw a road.

It led to some new place.

A place that I had never seen before.

Suddenly, I recognized it.

It was Ukraine at war.

Strangely, I felt relieved.

For the first time since the beginning of invasion, I felt something positive.

As if some outer force was giving me a hint and pulling me out

of my paralysis.

Ilija had a different feeling.

To him, going back to Ukraine was short sighted,

impulsive and simply unsafe.

He didn't want to go with me. -Ne idem.

He didn't want me to go. -Don t stay long in Poland.

Better yet, don t go through Poland. Go through Budapest.

Hungary is a Russian alley. They will not bomb there.

He started being sarcastic.

He could not say it explicitly...

but what he really meant was the fear of losing me.

Yet, he had to accept my choice.

Everywhere on my way, I saw tired women with kids.

Their eyes could not hide it. They have been through hell.

All of them were headed west.

I was the only one who went the opposite direction.

Home...

My home was 500 kilometers from the border.

I had to make a layover and stay with my family.

The first person I met was my cousin.

He had to abandon his dinner because of the siren.

I followed him to the bomb shelter.

When the city was bombed, he spent five hours in here.

Now he is well prepared.

Look what we have here. A Bandera-style knife.

What is it for? -To cut through the foam.

Is this in case of debris? -Da, if you get stuck here.

The most peaceful guy on earth.

He got himself a gun.

Playing an American cop.

That s it.

You can just stand casually.

For the first time in my life i m holding a real weapon.

This is my grandma.

She takes her own safety measures.

She keeps the names of all people in our family on the list.

Both alive and dead.

This way she makes sure not to forget them in her prayers.

Hana, Natalija, Taras, Nadija,

Andri, Nazarij, Ivan,

Halina, Kristina, Ilija, Kristina.

Sometimes she also prays for neighbors, friends and those in need.

When the war broke out, grandma's notebook got full.

Ivan.

Katja. Anton.

Andriju�a. Oksana.

Nata�a. Senja.

Julija. Sa�a.

These are my friends from Central and Eastern Ukraine who had to flee the war.

Grandma's place became their temporary home.

Oksana, Andriju�a and Nata�a...

fled from a small town of Bila Cerkva after a massive shelling.

Katja, Anton, baby Ivan and the cat Kuzja...

spent five endless days in the bomb shelter on the left bank of Kijev.

They decided to flee.

Kapa, Ljo�a and the cat Feliks fled from the town of Slovjansk in the east.

Their city is 10 miles away from the front-line.

All locals were asked to evacuate.

Senya, Julija and Sa�a survived three weeks under the siege of Mariupol.

Miraculously, they managed to escape.

At one of the crossroads,

there was a huge puddle of blood, three metres or so,

and human brains. I remember how Senja said that

it was the first time he saw brains.

Aviation has arrived! O jebote, the rocket fell down here!

A single rocket made a such huge destruction!

Senja, Sa�a's and Julia's son, is hard of hearing. He rarely talks.

He wants to show you a piece of a missile.

This is the only non-practical thing he was allowed to bring from home.

Tamarind is not feeling well.

Some parts are more or less fine, but the ithers dried up,

especially these parts at the top.

Perhaps it dried up when i wasn t here.

But if you look at this part, it s ok.

This leaf is all right. This one is damaged, though.

How are things in Kijev? What s the atmosphere like?

The other day i was walking in the city, trying to remember all of it.

I kept thinking, what if this building will be destroyed, and this one, too?

I have to remember them all. But what if Maidan gets ruined?

And then i thought, maybe it s not so bad?

Maybe all ugly things will get destroyed? Like that monster house?

Let them bomb that monster house in the Podil area, right?

Here i have dearest hopes,

impossible not to love you,

moj Kijeve!

I was euphoric to be back.

Unlike many people in Ukraine now, i still had a home.

My home was whole, undamaged, ready to accept me.

As if nothing had happened.

As if the war did not exist.

Unfortunately, it did.

When the war started, my friend Oksana was at her home in Bu�a,

Kijev's suburb.

She had to spend two weeks in the basement hiding from Russians.

One day, she managed to escape.

Once Bu�a was freed, she asked me to check on her place.

I have asked - they are just blocking things

to be able to check them later.

But nobody knows when the gas will be on.

As regards the electricity, they have no clue.

They came all the way from the Vinicja region.

Do you live in this house? -Da, da.

In the second entrance.

There were just two of us who stayed.

What was happening here in the past few weeks?

Ihor Litvinenko; Temporarily buried 05.04.2022

Civilians live here

Dear people, i could never imagine this. I could never imagine such things.

My my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren never see

what we have seen here.

There were people raped here.

At our neighbor s.

The worst thing, those were young fellows,

19, 20 years old. Unbelievable.

One of the women, our neighbor,

she is 41 or 42.

She has a 19-year old son.

She was raped by a 19-year old guy!

I am not likely to travel anytime soon.

I would love to see you, but i not want to be moving anywhere.

I just wish everyone was home

and everything was the way it used to be. -I wish that too.

Eight months into the invasion

Attention! Air-raid alert!

Proceed to the nearest bomb shelter.

Prevod: baglyaspeter