Women’s experiences in the face of brutality: “A Picture to Remember” at the 2024 Samizdat Film Festival4 min read
This autofictional documentary centres around the experience of the lingering war in Eastern Ukraine and the invasion of 2022 through stories of women in the director’s family. It is a self-reflexive and personal story, one that is important in affecting public perception of the war.
Olga Chernykh, a filmmaker from Donetsk whose family joined her in Kyiv after 2014, originally focused her documentary on her mother, a pathologist working in the city morgue and part of a dynasty of doctors. The film’s concept shifted after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2024, but the footage capturing the daily lives of morgue workers, predominantly women, became integral to the documentary narrative in A Picture to Remember, which explores the experiences of women in Olga’s family as they endure wars and separation from loved ones.
Olga’s mother, Olena, is hard-bitten and practical when she solves everyday issues in the Kyiv morgue, appearing to distance herself from her past life in occupied Donetsk. The film opens with a scene in the morgue’s bomb shelter, where Olga, her mother, and her friend take cover from Russian shelling in Kyiv. The setting seems morbid, but only at first glance: inside the bomb shelter, there is humour and a zest for life. Someone has a bottle of French champagne, which they open amid the sound of air raid sirens and rocket fire. But indeed, the occupation and the full-scale war permeate every frame of A Picture to Remember and every character.
A standout feature of the film are the long, contemplative shots where the filmmaker discovers her mother anew. Through the distance provided by the camera and the perspective of an observer, we perceive Olena as more than just a mother or a wife. The film contrasts her seemingly composed professional attitude with a nervous, pessimistic view of herself and her life, the reasons for which are many. One is her disconnection from her roots, particularly as her mother — the director’s grandmother — remains in Donetsk.
Olga’s elderly grandmother, Zoryna, or Zorya, is the life of the party and the family’s backbone. Even in an occupied city, she approaches life pragmatically, keeping in touch with her daughter and granddaughter through calls and video chats. The author hints that “a picture” in question remains somewhere there, with Zorya in Donetsk, but we are left to decide which picture ought to be remembered. Is it the thriving Donetsk of the early 2010s? Or the happy and united family that built a life for themselves in industrious, hard-working Donbas?
The intimate story of their family is significant in retelling the history of Ukraine, echoing the experiences of countless families in Donbas — people uprooted, homes destroyed, social bonds severed, and careers derailed.
While A Picture to Remember maintains a quiet, understated tone, its focus on women’s lives has political power, too: it challenges conventional historical narratives and official archives that often omit personal stories, especially those of women, and connects us with the universal questions of the effect wars have on “ordinary” people.
What, then, remains of Olga’s own story in the film? We glimpse it through fleeting memories and a montage of family video archives vis-a-vis Dziga Vertov’s Symphony of Donbas (1930) — one of the primary, yet not the only, creative choices of the film. Vertov’s innovative chronicle looks to the future of an industrial region, promising a revolution of technology and society. But just as the future decade of the 1930s brought disillusionment and the rollback of the revolution, nearly 90 years later the region’s hopes and promises have once again been dashed.
At first, A Picture to Remember seems to unfold at a leisurely, meditative pace. But its deep immersion (the film lasts nearly an hour and a half) leads to a slow and painful climax, helped along by the soundtrack. The film’s composer, Maryana Klochko, creates soundscapes by mixing air-raid sirens with detuned piano, ambient synth textures, and her own voice. Klochko combines the score with sound from archival footage, and the audience is immersed in the world of Olga’s family. Shots of a snowstorm engulfing the morgue from outside evoke not calmness but also claustrophobia and panic, a fear for oneself, one’s family, and one’s city.
Ultimately, A Picture to Remember is not just a personal memoir, but a reflection on survival, displacement, and the quiet life and fight of women in the face of brutality.
A Picture to Remember is premiering in the UK on 2 October as part of the 2024 Samizdat Film Festival. It will also be screened online at Klassiki from 3-24 October.
