Timestamp

Kateryna Gornostai’s Timestamp was filmed between March 2023 and June 2024 in central, southern, and eastern Ukraine—regions experiencing varying intensities of war. The documentary’s perspective shifts from frontline areas to more distant zones, revealing the diverse effects of conflict on school-aged children and their teachers. Its mosaic structure helps audiences understand how daily realities differ dramatically between regions. 

Children walk over glass shards and play basketball amid the ruins of their bombed schools, while laughter and chatter echo through crowded bomb shelters, corridors, and schoolyards. Sorrow, fear, and anxiety also coexist in this war-saturated everyday life. The film demonstrates how life continues despite conflict. Some effects of war are irreversible and permanently tragic, but young people, schools, art, and play respond to horrors by building a unique resilience. Cinematographer Oleksandr Roshchyn and editor Nikon Romanchenko employ a sensitive and intimate visual style, zooming into the details of everyday life and emotion amid an almost incomprehensible wartime landscape.

Heta Heikkala