Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago. As the war continues, a new documentary from a Bay Area-raised filmmaker aims to show the beauty in the midst of the destruction. Porcelain War, one of Deadline’s top ten documentaries of 2024, opens in Bay Area theaters on Jan. 3. The film’s codirector and Palo Alto native, Brendan Bellomo, spoke with KQED’s Lakshmi Sarah.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Lakshmi Sarah: The film, Porcelain War, is the story of three Ukrainian artists who chose not to flee as Russian tanks barreled through their homeland. Can you share a little bit about what prompted the idea for the film?
Brendan Bellomo: One of our producers grew up under Russian oppression and she was in communist Poland as a child, and then became a political refugee when her parents and her and her sister escaped to the United States. About eight years ago, she discovered [Ukrainian artists] Anya and Slava’s figurines. And she was so moved by them because they reminded her of home.
She shared them with me, and I was absolutely blown away. I’d never seen anything like them. And I couldn’t believe that something so small could have such huge stories. We all started to work together on an animation project. And then Russia invaded Ukraine. I called up Slava to ask, “When are you leaving? Are you guys okay?” And he told me, “We’re not going to leave.”
“We’re going to keep making our art at night,” he told me. He was in the Ukrainian special forces and training civilians. There was a story that wasn’t being told.
We really wanted to empower them to share their story with the world. We realized, if we can work together with a translator over Zoom and essentially create an impromptu film school, we could teach them to translate their instincts as artists into cinema. And what they captured is Porcelain War.
The film is the winner of the 2024 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for a U.S. documentary and it shows ordinary people, living through extreme circumstances. Are there specific scenes that stick out to you?
Slava and Anya draw deep inspiration from nature, and they told me they were going to go mushroom picking and that they would film. I received a text from Slava that they’d encountered a minefield. My blood froze. Then he sent another text and he said, “Everything’s fine, I’m removing all the mines so that we can still pick mushrooms.”
We got this footage back and it was absolutely harrowing to realize that Ukraine is now the most mined country in the world. And yet, they were still choosing to live and to find creative inspiration. The contrast that occurred would be inherent in the fact that they just wanted to live their lives and participate and be inspired by the world.
Codirector and one of the people featured in the film, Slava Leontyev is quoted saying: “Ukraine is like porcelain, easy to break, yet impossible to destroy.” What are some ways you aimed to show this idea in the film?
First and foremost, it’s in the resilience of people. Everybody in the film chose to maintain their humanity, even with everything crumbling around them, and to continue being creative. When you look at the fact that when Russia first invaded, they destroyed museums and universities and they killed artists. This is, in essence, a genocidal war, and Ukrainian culture is a primary target of that aggression, so the fact that they’re choosing to continue to be creative and to continue living is an act of resistance. And to record those processes, is another form of resistance. It just shows that people are unbreakable.
Can you talk a little bit about using animation to bring the paintings and the story to life?
As Anya says in the film, “Her drawings are her language,” and there were certain places that we couldn’t bring the camera to. We don’t have a time machine to go back and see their beautiful life in Crimea before it was annexed to Russia. At the end of the film, Anya and Slava shared their dreams for a peaceful Ukraine in the future. We worked with BluBlu Studios in Poland, a collection of artists, and they hand drew 7000 frames of animation, and that’s what brought Anya’s love of porcelain figurines to life.
As someone who grew up in the Bay Area, how does it feel to have the film available here in the Bay, what does that mean to you?
When I grew up in the Bay Area, there was a deep sense of community and of art serving both the purpose of aesthetic value, but also something that could participate and make an impact in that community. Being able to return now with my first film and with this amazing collaboration from artistic communities around the world, feels really incredible. I think the Bay Area is kind of emblematic of that type of attitude — that collaboration and artistic expression can have real meaning for people.
Your film comes to the Bay Area just before President-elect Trump begins his second term. How are you feeling about what that means for U.S. policy and its role in Ukraine?
I think there’s a great deal of uncertainty. He’s expressed this eagerness to end the war quickly. But I think, given the history of his interactions with authoritarian leaders and with Russia, we don’t really know what he’s going to do. When Slava speaks about this, he’s really hopeful that the American people will continue their support and will recognize that not only does Ukraine need help as a free democratic nation that was invaded, but that the outcome of this war affects all of us.
You have China that is watching the outcome of this war. If Russia wins, it might embolden them to attack Taiwan. This is the largest conflict in Europe since World War II and it truly does affect all of us around the world. Freedom and democracy are at risk now more than ever. I hope there is an awareness, and I hope that this film can give an additional perspective on what everyday people are going through, and how it can affect all of us.
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