Nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, “Porcelain War” is a poignant, enriching film about the power of creativity in conflict zones. The film traces the making of vibrant ceramic figurines by two dedicated artists in the nation of Ukraine, which is now approaching its fourth year of warfare since Russia’s military invasion.
Directors Slava Leontyev and Brendan Bellomo, along with producer Paula DuPré Pesman, joined TheWrap’s Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman for a post-screening Q&A on Thursday night in Los Angeles that was part of our ongoing Screening Series.
In addition to co-directing, Leontyev is also a subject of the documentary. An artist and former soldier of the Ukrainian Special Forces, he lives with his wife Anya Stasenko in a rural area outside Crimea. They both create objects of beauty, such as the delicate porcelain dolls that came to symbolize the fragility of life during war.
“From the very beginning, [Anya and I] decided we’ll never be focused on destruction,” Leontyev said during the discussion. “We’ll never be focused on violence because it’s senseless to bring audiences extra news footage. We’ll be focused on personal experience and on beauty. All the devastation looked the same. All these crumbled buildings looked the same.”
Leontyev pointed out the metaphors of nature and art — from dandelions to snails without shells — to tell a touching story of Ukraine’s fight and resilience.
“We felt we were the eyes of our project, we were the people on the ground,” he said. “And we looked around really attentively, because all is so fragile during the war. And we filmed every flower, every huge forest or building or person. We filmed [it] all like it was the last day of the existence because all is fragile and nobody knows who will survive for tomorrow.”
At the screening, the filmmakers also brought along porcelain pieces, such as the ones featured in the documentary, for the audience to see:
In terms of the logistics of making a film in Ukraine, Colorado-based co-director Bellomo addressed the complex chain of Zoom calls and networking that went into the endeavor.
“We began with the first of many challenges: How do you bring a camera into a war zone?” Bellomo said. “It’s not like you could just ship something which reliably gets FedExed right there to the front line. We discovered there was a network of volunteers and it was actually a makeup artist from New Jersey who was stockpiling duffel bags of medical supplies, 50, 60 at a time, 3,000 pounds.”
Bellomo used the makeup artist’s freight expertise and also set up an “impromptu film school” with Leontyev and the film’s cinematographer Andrey Stefanov, also a member of Ukraine’s special forces.
“That was so that [Leontyev and Stefanov] could take their artistic instincts and translate them into cinema,” Bellomo said. “And in this time [Leontyev] and I, we would start sketching, and these sketches became storyboards and diagrams, ideas for shots. We looked at paintings, sculptures and pieces of cinema that we loved and we realized we’re fluent in the same language in visual art and so we had this very rich collaboration.”
Expressing the message of the film, Bellomo added, “The opposite of war is not peace and tranquility, it’s creativity. And when they’re choosing to seek out beauty, to be inspired by it and to create more, that is an act of resistance of creative resistance.”
For the full video, including the filmmakers’ wild story of acquiring music for the movie’s soundtrack from Ukrainian folk band DakhaBrakha, click here.
