A handful of independent short films promote empathy and compassion toward war victims in Ukraine
“I do remember my dad,” says Mark, a 32-year-old Russian-born Ukrainian man studying in Beijing. Dressed in a yellow Adidas hoodie and sitting hunched over on his bed, he shifts his eyes away from the camera as he continues softly, “Yeah, he loved me a lot.”
Shaky archival footage flits across the screen, of 1990s Ukraine shot from moving vehicles, as Mark recalls how his Russian father used to put him on his lap while driving. “I was imagining I was driving the car,” Mark says over shots showing young people goofing off by the roadside and a blurry rainbow-colored sunset.
Jia Yanan, a freelance filmmaker and photographer, shot Mark’s reminiscences in his Beijing apartment on March 6. That was the night before the city of Nikolaev, Mark’s hometown 250 miles south of Kyiv, was bombed. Jia made the as yet unreleased short documentary A Monologue About Home, telling Mark’s story, as part of an initiative called “Against the War, In the Name of Cinema,” which she first came across in the New Asian Filmmakers Collective WeChat group on March 2. The initiative called for impromptu, low-budget, non-commercial anti-war films to be submitted within one week to “raise our voices as Asian filmmakers,” while citing United Nations figures showing the war in Ukraine had seen 536 civilian casualties between February 24 and March 1.
Siyi is the former Culture Editor at The World of Chinese. She writes about arts, culture, and society, and is ever-curious about the minds, hearts, and souls inside all of these spheres. She is now a freelance writer with additional work experience in independent filmmaking and the field of education.
