“Ukraine is like porcelain, easy to break but impossible to destroy,” artist and co-director Slava Leontyev says in Porcelain War, a documentary filmed in Ukraine over 18 months following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the country in February 2022.
Porcelain War — which opens Jan. 17 at Cineplex McGillivray for a week-long Winnipeg run — follows three artists who choose to stay in their native Ukraine amid the war, “armed with their art, their cameras and, for the first time in their lives, their guns.”
The film focuses on Leontyev and his wife, Anya Stasenko, as they sculpt and paint fanciful porcelain figurines. The delicate creations and the artists’ attachment to nature are an intrinsic part of the documentary, set against scenes of falling missiles and ravaged countrysides. Leontyev, a native of Ukraine’s second largest battle-scarred city, Kharkiv, is also seen training new recruits as a special forces shooting instructor with Ukraine’s military.
The feature-length …