'Porcelain War' finds strength in fragility

Powerful documentary looks at Ukrainian artists at war.

“Porcelain War” opens with an idyllic scene of a couple walking through nature, their adorable little scruffbucket of a dog bounding along in front of them. The light is golden, the sun feels warm, and the man and woman stop to observe a butterfly or an insect. The woman is inspired to paint a representation of the little animal on a tiny piece of porcelain.

Then, the documentary hard-cuts to images of war, block after block of cold, gray rubble, lit up by the fires of a bombing barrage.

How can both images exist in the same heart, let alone the same country?

“Porcelain War,” co-directed by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev, is both a harrowing depiction of the war against Ukraine and a galvanizing portrait of three Ukrainian artists’ attempt to stay human in the midst of that war. To create these minute, fragile works of art when their country is crashing down around them feels like an act of liberation, an act of defiance.

Leontyev is one of those artists, a sculptor creating the porcelain butterflies, snails and birds that become the blank canvases for his partner, Anya Stasenko, to paint on. It’s a partnership that’s personal as well as artistic, and the couple is committed to preserving Ukrainian art and culture against the Russian onslaught, one figurine at a time.

(Photos courtesy of Picturehouse)

But Stasenko and Leontyev aren’t isolated from the horrors of war. Leontyev is a member of a special forces unit that trains civilians to become soldiers, and Stasenko serves as a battlefield medic. Leontyev is good at his job as a soldier, but bemoans, “What I’m living is absolutely not my life.”

There are harrowing scenes shot on GoPro cameras as the soldiers hustle across frozen fields and through ruined buildings, and aerial shots of remote drones dropping bombs on their targets. These scenes might have had the thrill of a war movie if we hadn’t already gotten to know the couple as civilian artists. Instead, we just fear for their safety.

The film also follows a friend of the couple, a photographer named Andrey, who ferried his wife and two teenage daughters to Poland to keep them safe. Andrey’s description of escaping the country, including driving down a mountain pass in a car without brakes, neatly if grimly encapsulates the chaos and uncertainty that fills Ukraine.

“Porcelain War” is very much a Ukrainian production – Leontyev shot most of the footage and gave it to Bellomo, an American filmmaker, to assemble. The rich, haunting soundtrack is by the Ukrainian quartet DakhaBrakha, a favorite at Madison summer music festivals. It’s both a ground-level report of life during wartime, and an urgent manifesto on the power of creation to stand against destruction.

“Porcelain War” is now in theaters. In Chicago, it’s playing at the Music Box Theatre.