When the fires of war have burned bright, there’s a tendency to elide a country and the conflict. It’s happened with Vietnam and Afghanistan, and now it’s Ukraine’s turn. A nation of forests and rolling pastures, wildlife and beauty, yet those elements have seemingly been forgotten due to the ongoing Russian invasion and constant images of bombed-out urban landscapes. So there’s something essential about how Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev begin their wartime documentary Porcelain War in the Ukrainian countryside among the lizards and leaves in the gold-tinged woods outside of the city of Kharkiv that inspire the art of Leontyev and his lifelong friend, wife and creative partner Anya Stasenko.
Their medium is ceramics – delicate and charming painted owls, foxes, snails, and dragons. Leontyev molds and fires, Stasenko paints and glazes. Yet the idea that they’re ignoring the conflict is nonsense. They were resident in the Crimea in 2014 when Russia invaded that Ukrainian province, before fleeing to what they thought would be the safety of Kharkiv. As Leontyev prepares for war in 2022, it’s clear that mixing slurry is as essential an act of resistance as fieldstripping an AK-47. If there is no culture, Leontyev explains, there is no Ukraine. It’s not an either/or equation.
It’s a documentary that’s arguably in conversation with Roman Liubyi’s Iron Butterflies, which used performance art to examine the 2014 murder of 298 passengers aboard Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 by a Russian missile unit. Porcelain War is less arty, in the classical sense, but equally fascinated by the creative urges during war. It’s that rare film that truly tackles how people live within a bloody conflict. I’ve personally always said that a core problem with U.S. foreign policy is that Americans regard war as something that happens somewhere else: Porcelain War shows a conflict so immediate, so on-their-front-doorstep, that Leontyev is basically commuting home for dinner and to play with their dog after a day of bombardment. Meanwhile, Stasenko keeps on with her art – her own form of resistance – and their old friend and fellow artist, painter Andrey Stefanov wonders if and when it will be safe to be reunited with his daughters.
The film is often subtle about the art it represents, but that’s arguably one of its greatest, most poignant strengths. It’s not highlighted because it is ubiquitous, whether it be the patterns that Stasenko draws onto his unit’s drones, the decorations left on the endless military and civilian graces, the mesmerizing soundtrack from Ukrainian folk experimentalists DakhaBrakha, or the subtle animations built upon Leontyev and Stasenko’s ceramics.
Yet if the art is ubiquitous, so is the violence. Bellomo (a first-time feature director) and Leontyev (a first-time filmmaker) don’t restrict the perspective merely to the artists. Instead, they give cameras to Leontyev’s unit, dubbed Saigon, to translate the stomach-dropping horror of being in a combat zone. The center of the film is a nightmarish offensive as mortars, recoilless rifles, and snipers are deployed against rockets. The sensation is stomach-churning, who lives and who dies seemingly arbitrary in this calm chaos. Yet, as Leontyev constantly notes, what’s the option? In blunt terms, the obliteration of Ukraine as a country, a culture, a concept.
As a portrait of cultural strength in dark times, Porcelain War was already important, having won the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. As America faces an era when the culture many of us hold dear seems under threat, where it feels like we’re moments away from an official policy against “degenerate art,” it’s becoming disturbingly timely.
This article appears in January 24 • 2025.
