One of documentary cinema’s most astute and incisive observers, Vitaly Mansky, returns to the Berlinale with his new, three-hour film Time to the Target [+lee también:
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The city itself is the main protagonist of the documentary, which covers the period from summer 2022 to spring 2024. Once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, one could easily mistake it for Prague or Vienna, with its cobbled streets criss-crossed by tram lines, churches and elegant downtown buildings. As the film opens on an early morning, the city is waking up: cleaners sweep the streets, a van delivers bread, and everything seems normal – but very soon, we see a young man with a prosthetic leg.

Mansky’s distanced observational style is intertwined with carefully placed conversations, where an army band and a group of gravediggers provide a reference point. It is still early in the war, but the band has funeral duties daily, and so do the cemetery workers, particularly a foreman complaining that the graveyard will soon have no capacity to receive the incoming bodies. It is exactly this location that serves as a horrifying marker of the passage of time as the war escalates: wide, static shots show us how the number of tombs, all adorned with Ukrainian flags and those of various army detachments, grows exponentially – all the way up to the final, chilling scene of a group of very young soldiers standing in front of hundreds of graves.

Seemingly normal daily life continues in parallel: an elegantly dressed girl is taking a new set of photos for her Instagram profile, a wedding takes place, a tourist guide tells her group about the history of a church. But through Mansky’s sober, meticulous editing, war is getting closer and closer as we witness several extended scenes of funeral processions and services. A cavalcade of funeral cars travels from to the cemetery, and people standing by the road kneel with their hands on their hearts. Crying mothers are receiving honorary medals for their killed sons, and Mansky even enters a wake in one of their homes – a simultaneously dignified and devastating scene.

When they are not playing, the army band members, out of whom the bandleader, two trumpeters and the drummer get the most screen time, wait in parked buses. And as winter approaches, their and the gravediggers’ work intensifies. The film gets darker both visually and narratively: it rains, it snows, a sharp wind is blowing, and Russian missiles are starting to reach the city. People, who now have to clean up the damage inflicted by these weapons, are increasingly outspoken, and by no means do they leave their own government and their indecisive Western allies unscathed.

The extended running time allows for an emotional and dynamic build-up from a semblance of normalcy to the most palpable consequences of war. The director doesn’t need to show blood or dismembered bodies to convey the horrors, and his distanced, sober approach, juxtaposed with his love for his compatriots and homeland, also allows for moments of hope and pride.

Time to the Target is a co-production between Latvia’s Vertov, Ukraine’s Braha Production Company and the Czech Republic’s Hypermarket.