by Ana Olenina Hedberg, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Media Studies, SILC
Ukrainian civilians pay their respects to soldiers killed defending the nation. Still from Songs of Slow Burning Earth
On Thursday February 27, the Melikian Center hosted a screening of the Ukrainian documentary film, Songs of Slow Burning Earth, followed by a discussion with the director, Olha Zhurba. The film charts the impacts of Russia’s full-scale invasion of February 2022, as the trauma seeps through society, transforming everyday life. It begins on Day 1, as Ukrainian citizens woke up to catastrophe, and were forced to confront it. Following audio clips of civilian calls to emergency services, Zhurba shares dream-like, serene pastoral scenes, before switching to footage she shot at Kyiv’s central railway station, of the scramble to evacuate women and children westward to safety. From this starting point, we see how life continues: always aware, as Zhurba put it, of the feeling that death is behind the frame.
Ukrainian women and children board a train at Kyiv Central Railway Station in February 2022. Still from Songs of Slow Burning Earth
As viewers, we glimpse the nightmare that Ukrainians have had to wake up to, day after day. The scariest part is that there is no choice but to continue powering through, despite danger, grief, physical and emotional scars. The film’s title is exactly right: Songs of the Slow Burning Earth is an elegy depicting the slow agony and anguish of a country that has no respite, that is constantly under attack. That sense is heightened by the filmmaker’s use of sound: the droning music that comes in and out in its most striking scenes suggests the state of limbo, a state between life and death.
Deep trauma is visible in the devastated, frozen body language of refugees: a child staring into the distance; moms, sitting there in a train station, clutching their babies and not even budging at the air raid alert, because there is nowhere to run. Deep trauma is expressed in the extended scene where people kneel by the roadside, at each turn of the winding mountain road, as a funeral truck transports the remains of Ukraine’s defenders up the hill in the snow. And then, the angle widens, to show hundreds and hundreds of fresh graves. Perhaps most harrowingly, the deep trauma is captured in the games of young boys, in villages in Eastern Ukraine retaken by Ukrainian forces. One of them narrates, flatly, the unimaginable horror of watching as a sadistic Russian officer shot his father through the foot in a calculated act of terror. These boys then had to live nine months under Russian occupation, confronting things that no child should see. The wide-open, hollow-eyed stare of the child who has witnessed the horrors of war is among the most haunting images of this film.
In addition to revealing the profound devastation and loss that the Russian invasion has inflicted on ordinary Ukrainian families, the film also shows the remarkable solidarity, resilience, and everyday bravery of people that continue to help others. We encounter a driver who is helping evacuate children from Mariupol, a bread baker who has not abandoned his bakery near the frontline; coroners, working on identifying the remains of Ukrainian soldiers for the sake of their families; teachers in makeshift schools who are still trying to bring some sense of normalcy to the children’s disrupted childhood and education. These scenes are profoundly moving; they inspire tremendous respect for Ukraine’s civil society and mutual care.
The siege of Mariupol, the bombing of the Drama Theater and the Azovstal, are seared in our memories because of the news reports and the photography of Mstyslav Chernov, as well as his unforgettable Twenty Days in Mariupol. Another shocking documentary about the siege, Mariupolis-2, was recorded by the Lithuanian filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravicius, who was killed by Russian troops while filming the devastation of the city. Watching Zhurba’s film, we get yet another side of this story: a real-time glimpse into the personal experiences of people who were trying to flee the city, those who tried to go back in search of their relatives, and those who bravely tried to bring food and aid.
What I found striking about Zhurba’s approach is the camera’s discreet and respectful gaze that gives us a compassionate, non-intrusive perspective on people dealing with grief and extreme circumstances. In a morgue, for example, we watch a woman trying to identify her husband, based on photographs of the body and personal belongings. Instead of giving the viewers a full access to the grieving widow’s face, the camera is angled obliquely and is placed behind a murky glass window of the morgue’s office. Zhurba uses this technique of filming from an angle, or from behind some obstacle, in several other intense moments, offering her subjects some breathing space and preserving their dignity in such moments of suffering. The film features a lot of voice-over narration by characters, either recounting what they experienced or witnessed, or reading from their diaries. These voices are layered over images of war-torn landscapes or images of these speakers at a different moment in time. This juxtaposition allows viewers to perceive the shadow of the war stretching over people’s lives, throughout Ukraine’s traumatic present.
A boy loads his home-made wooden machine-gun in East Ukraine, after the retreat of Russian occupying forces. Still from Songs of Slow Burning Earth
In discussion after the screening, Zhurba was asked what prompted her to commit to tripod-based static shots from the first days after the Russian invasion, when many film-makers and audiences believe handheld footage captures intensity and conveys authenticity. She shared that from day one, it already felt like the apocalypse. In the chaos and confusion, it was impossible to identify a single character to follow with the camera. Long shots served her goal of making an ensemble piece, to depict the solidarity forged through shared trauma. She, of course, was herself assailed by the trauma and the chaos, and found literal help in her chosen method. “I was sometimes holding the tripod” she said, “because it helped me not to succumb to the chaos.”
The result is a modern masterpiece of direct cinema. Zhurba captures small, seemingly inconsequential details that nevertheless amount to a complex and multilayered encounter with reality. Most importantly, Zhurba’s style of filmmaking opens a space of empathy and identification for the viewers. At a time when ignorance or malice prompts some to question Ukraine’s suffering, unity and resolve, Songs of Slow Burning Earth offers a vital, authentic and humanistic message about Ukraine’s heroism.
It is hard to watch; but reckless to look away.
Text by Ana Hedberg Olenina, expanded from her post-screening comments and conversation with Olha Zherba, February 27 2025. This event also featured comments from Melikian Center affiliates Olena Tanchyk and Anna Holian, and was part of the series Kino Nights, curated by Luiza Parvu and Toma Peiu.