>> Catalog 2025

Time to the Target

Chas pidlotu

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LATVIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, UKRAINE / 2025 / Ukrainian / Color / DCP / 179 min

Director, Script: Vitaly Mansky
Photography: Roman Petrusyak
Editing: Matvey Troshinkin
Sound: Jan Cenek
Producers: Natalia Manskaia, Tereza Horska, Filip Remunda, Vit Klusak, Nataliia Khazan
Production Companies: Vertov, Hypermarket Film, Braha Film Production Company
Source: Vertov

Russia’s invasion has plunged Ukraine into intense fighting, but what impact has it had on regions far from the front lines? The director, known for films such as Private Chronicles. Monologue (1999, YIDFF 2001), Wild, Wild Beach (2006, YIDFF 2007), Motherland or Death (2011, YIDFF 2013), and his most recent Eastern Front (2023, YIDFF 2023) documented his hometown of Lviv for a year and a half. The film captures, with striking clarity, the residents’ growing exhaustion under the constant threat of Russian missiles. The funeral music offered for the victims gradually takes on deeper sorrow as time passes. A powerful work, infused with anger. (INT)

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[Director’s Statement] The film’s director was born and raised in Lviv, his homeland and source of strength. He has returned there in his films at various periods. So he cannot stand aside when his country is fighting for its future and his countrymen face the most dramatic moment in modern history—a criminal fullscale war against Ukraine’s existence and its people. He turns his feelings and understanding of this city at the rear of the front into a film depicting diverse and detailed compositions of everyday life as the seasons change. The routine rituals, despite their tragic nature, have become terrifyingly mundane, and there is no refuge from the deep-burning pain. The film’s structure and visual style are distinctive compared to typical news footage from Ukraine. The use of full and long shots allows the viewer to become a participant in the events occurring on screen.

When shooting Eastern Front, I was passing through Lviv. A full-scale war had been raging for months. Lviv buried its young men every day. I witnessed this on my way to and from filming—a profound shock, as my childhood city of bright memories had become one of grief. I paused at the funerals, looking into the faces of those saying goodbye. Perhaps I was looking for acquaintances from my past… Each time I saw the same military band—different faces with the same shared sorrow, impossible to bear. Gradually, I approached them and knew they should be the film’s protagonists: tragic, yet full of love for my hometown.