Family dynamics are significantly complicated by the war in Ukraine in Svitlana Lishchynska’s personal documentary about how post-Soviet identities have torn holes in the region’s social fabric. Aptly named, A Bit of a Stranger was begun in Mariupol just before the war started and its unpolished nature – eleven d.p.s are credited – testifies to the difficult circumstances in which it was shot, with Lishchynska trying to come to terms in wartime with her position as Russian-educated Ukrainian and absentee mom. Though fitting into the category of film-as-therapy, with a bit too much self-flagellation, Stranger is an original take on how three generations of women see themselves as reflections of their nation and their lineage. Festivals will benefit most.
Lishchynska, 52, was born in Mariupol and came of age in the late years of the USSR, when conformity was rigidly enforced: she was a Soviet citizen raised in a Russian-speaking household, and once the regime collapsed she promised herself to become her own woman, unshackling herself from expectations of who and what she should be. The problem is, the past has a way of reminding us that no matter how hard we try, certain shackles may be loosened but never fully severed.
Just before the war began, Lishchynska decided to make a personal documentary about her matriarchal family and the generational differences. In the mid-1990s she had a child, Sasha, but the need to assert her independence in all ways by jettisoning the constraints of Soviet conditioning led her to pursue a career in TV production in Kyiv, leaving Sasha with her mother Valentina. The guilt this engendered – bad mother syndrome – remains a deep wound which informs the entire documentary, which is very much designed to explain why, both to herself and Sasha, she had to leave her in Mariupol.
Seen now, unselfconsciously embodying the role of doting grandmother, Valentina appears to be the ideal loving granny, but Lishchynska more than hints that the easy love between her mother and her daughter skipped the middle generation. Perhaps it was the rigidity of the communist system: though firmly of Ukrainian heritage, Valentina was part of the immediate post-WWII generation programmed to accept the Russification of the entire Soviet empire, and she transmitted this to her own daughter. Only Russian was spoken at home, and independence and individuality were discouraged. This was what Lishchynska fled when she moved to Kyiv when Sasha was five, together with the fear of being a mother.
Consequently, hairstylist Sasha is far more Russified than her mother, and although she lives in Ukrainian Mariupol, her cultural and linguistic connections are closer to Moscow than Kyiv. Days before the war starts, she comes to visit her mother in Kyiv, together with her then husband (men are barely seen and never discussed), baby daughter Stefany and Valentina, but Sasha and family race back to Mariupol at the start of the invasion. For her it’s an existential crisis she’s ill-equipped to handle: she feels Russian yet knows she’s Ukrainian despite barely speaking the language. By mid-2022 she and Stefany have found refuge with a host family in London while Lishchynska and Valentina remain in Kyiv, knowing that the family apartment in Mariupol is partly destroyed.
A Bit of a Stranger feels messy but that’s built into the situation itself: three women with disparate coping mechanisms, raised in different eras, trying to make sense of a war they never anticipated. Much of the time one wonders who’s doing the filming given how raw and intimate the situations can be – press notes explain that some footage was shot by family friends, and clearly at other times Sasha or the director are holding the camera. Also included are shots of the destruction together with the eeriness of daily life in wartime. In addition, Lishchynska incorporates home movies starting with her parents’ wedding in 1968, all nicely edited by the filmmaker and Anja Zhukova, grounding memories which may have little independence outside the images. Of the three, only Valentina doesn’t fully reveal herself, but that’s her generation and her upbringing: soldier through, don’t complain, and be grateful for what you have now.
Director: Svitlana Lishchynska
Written by: Svitlana Lishchynska
With: Svitlana Lishchynska
Producer: Anna Kapustina
Co-producers: Fredrik Lange, Anthony Muir, Kristina Börjeson
Cinematography: Petro Tsymbal, Krystyna Lizohub, Ivan Fomichenko, Vlad Dergunov, Maryna Svitlychna, Denis Strashny, Anja Zhukova, Shaun Holder, Jasleen Kaur Sethi, Jack Bradley, Jack Laurenson
Editing: Svitlana Lishchynska, Anja Zhukova
Sound: Nataliia Avramenko, Erik Clauss
Production companies: Albatros Communicós (Ukraine), ZDF (Germany), Vilda Bomben Film (Sweden), Film i Väst (Sweden)
World sales: Film Harbour
Venue: Berlinale (Panorama)
In Ukrainian, Russian
90 minutes
