An extraordinary short film made by front line impacted teenagers during the Spring of 2025, 3 years into the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Following its international premiere at Manchester International Festival this summer, join us for a cosy and intimate screening in the artists Margate studio.
Daria, Hanna, Kira, Olexa, Rost, Sasha, Vlada, Vlada, Vesna and Zakhar are ten teenagers who like Radiohead, making art, swimming, dating, watching films, and hanging out with their friends. They also live close to the front line.
In spring 2025, these ten young people began filming, writing, singing, dancing, hugging, laughing, crying, and meeting up to make a film about their lives. Supported by a team of Ukrainian and British artists, psychologists, and producers, they created a work that reveals how young people have cared for and supported each other while exploring home, identity, belonging, love, rage, and survival in the face of constant danger.
This is also Ukraine shows the reality, hopes and challenges of being a teenager, and shares experiences that too often go unheard while the horror and futility of war unfolds.
Experimental in form, the film combines text and recordings by the young people about home, the normalisation of war, coping mechanisms and reflections on their lives since 2022. Using multiple images within one frame showing their local area, the places they visit and details of their lives, the combination of image and text converge and diverge to create a fabric of intensity, vulnerability and playfulness that references our experience of social media without being drawn into its worst qualities.
The film is a poetic, patchwork portrait of their lives from their point of view: unfiltered, everyday, and equally extraordinary.
Following the film a Q&A, with lead artist ‘the vacuum cleaner’ and Cecila Wee, a royal college of art academic, artist curator and union organiser, will discuss the ethics and aesthetics of social practice, non extractive film making and working towards radical care in a war zone.
Film is in spoken Ukrainian, English and with English subtitles.
Trigger warnings. Discussions of deaths during war, impacts of teenage deaths, air raid sirens, spoken Russian language.
We would suggest the film is appropriate for those 14 and older.
Screening information
Venue: Studio: Margate Arts Club
Venue capacity: 40
Accessibility: Accessible for some wheelchairs, gender neutral toilets and quiet spaces available. Please contact sophie@thevacuumcleaner.co.uk who can provide further details. If you would like to chat with us about your access requirements please get in touch with Sophie via email sophie@thevacuumcleaner.co.uk
The team
The film was produced as part of Balmy Ukraine, a project by the vacuum cleaner, UK artist and mental health activist, a bold project uniting art, activism, and mental health support. Rooted in the vacuum cleaner’s previous works For They Let In The Light at Chisenhale Gallery to Balmy Army at Manchester International Festival, the project connects British and Ukrainian artists with young people living through war.
The project was delivered through deep collaboration and mutual care, guided by Ukrainian organisations The Independent Cultural Initiative, GO, and Art Therapy Force, Jenna Omeltschenko, UK-based cultural producer.