THE STORY

A film by director and postdoctoral researcher in Human Geography Thomas Sideris.

The Donbas is a fluid geographical and historical space, shaped by shifting borders, industrial landscapes and overlapping identities. For many of its inhabitants, the sense of belonging has never been fixed or singular, but has changed from generation to generation and through successive political ruptures.

From 2014 to 2024, the region became a prolonged theatre of war, as military operations, displacement and occupation transformed both the territory itself and the lives of those who remained within it.

The documentary records the events of an entire decade in the form of a diary, while contemporary reality enters into dialogue with the Soviet past through unique archival material. Stories of residents from towns and villages across the Donbas are interwoven with the stories of soldiers from different parts of the eastern front, as well as with the stories of a university class from the distant year of 1972. They all unfold within an entirely fluid space, where even the boundary between life and death remains fluid.

Part of the film was shot on Super 8.