"Terykony" ("Boney Piles")
Nastya, 15, lives in Toretsk, a small coalmining township located 82 km north of Donetsk. Since it was liberated from the combined Russian-separatist forces in 2014, Toretsk has been in the gray zone along the engagement line. Almost every day the township comes under attack. Nastya was born into a family of coalminers, like the majority of Toretsk residents. As the coalmines close down, the township is increasingly depressed by unemployment. Nastya was six when three missiles launched by the Russian army hit her house on New Year's Eve in 2015. Fortunately, she was not at home at the time, but her father was killed. She survived but lost her father, childhood and faith in life. Nastya's school is just 800 m from their forward positions and has been shelled many times, which can be seen from dents and holes left by bullets and shrapnel in the façade. In order to distract their traumatized students, the teachers paint blue skies over the dents and holes.
Everyone who had a place to move to has left the warzone. Nastya has nowhere to go. Her family has not received any compensation for the destroyed house. Forced to survive by any means, Nastya collects and sells scrap metal. Nastya has PTSD. Now she lives with her mother and grandmother. Her mother has sunk into the underclass and there's no one to support her, so she has to make her own living. To the likes of her the war has become something commonplace, like the landscape outside the window. Yet Nastya has dreams. Like every girl, she dreams of a new house and a dog and keeps on writing letters to Santa asking him to bring her father back. Approximately 10,000 children currently reside in the Donbas warzone. Nastya seeks refuge from this world in the virtual reality. She found peace of mind in online music and draws hope from the worldwide web.
Terykony (Ukr. For Boney Piles), mounds of coal waste distinctively typical of the Donetsk coal basin landscapes, are an allegory for the fate of deprived children to whom war has become part of their life. Their cone-like shape and size make them resemble the Egyptian pyramids. Slack and other waste have been piled up in such mounds for centuries. The boney piles are an image of the earth from which all valuable resources have been drained and all that's left is slack. It's an allegory of human fates. Mass coalmine closedowns made the people jobless and deepened the cleavage in society. Living in a state of permanent insecurity and.deprived of care, they've no future. Toretsk is a small coalmining township located 82 km north of Donetsk. Toretsk has a long history. The coal mining in whole Donbass region began on it's territory in 1721. Since it was liberated from the combined Russian-separatist forces in 2014, Toretsk has been in the gray zone along the engagement line. It's residents became hostages, just like useless slack. The problem of deprived children exists in different parts of the world. Almost every day the township comes under attack. Today there are no working mines left in the town. Forward positions (the line of contact, also the engagement line) is a buffer zone in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions between the Ukrainian-controlled settlements and the temporarily occupied territories. Gray zone is buffer band of neutral territory. In some places reaches several kilometers, and in others, only two or three hundred meters. Grad is a Soviet truck-mounted 122 mm multiple rocket launcher.
This is a story of children who've suffered from shelling and lost their parents and dear ones but continue to live and love where others have given up on all hope. It's a story about coming of age and encountering the cruel reality. And it's about childhood that continues despite war. A full-length documentary about children of war. The method of documentary surveillance of characters and non-intrusion into their personal space makes it possible to show the dramatism of children's life on the front line. Nastya impressed us by her integrity, gown-up way of thinking and deep inner world. Nastya's story doesn't end with this movie. There's a clear storyline of her growing up. The movie leaves the viewer wondering what's going to happen to Nastya in the future. By immersing into the virtual world she tries to escape from the cruel reality which even grownups are unable to endure. Through the fate of one child we speak about a whole generation of Ukrainian children of war. The documentary is overflowing with symbolism. The ending frame is nothing like scenery from Tarkovsky's movie "Stalker". It's part of the apocalyptic surroundings in which Nastya lives. And it's an open question to the civilized world.
Although this movie is about the Russo-Ukrainian-War in 2014, it feels more than up-to-date. The shelling is not chaotic, Putin's terrorists purposefully target residential areas. The war has been going on for more than seven years, keeping the people in constant lethal danger. Children are especially endangered! There's an episode in the movie showing the very beginning of the schoolyear, the 1st of September. Those kids that go to the school were born in the wartime and haven't seen a single peaceful day! We've a whole generation born in the wartime. In addition to the horrors of war, we're very deeply impressed by their defenselessness. Now we've a lot of children whose limbs are torn off, whose parents are killed in this war, whose homes are destroyed. That's what Putin's hybrid warfare policy brings to this land. And this movie cries out loud to the world so Putin stops the war that he unleashed against Ukraine.
Written by Gregory Mann.
