A warmly engaging debut feature by 26-year-old documentary director Adelina Borets, Flowers of Ukraine is a pan-generational love letter to a charismatic, eccentric, stubbornly defiant older woman who refuses to be pushed around by anyone, not even murderous dictators like Vladimir Putin. A colourful character study with a timely political dimension, this Polish-Ukrainian production screens in competition in DOK Leipzig film festival this week ahead of further premieres in Kyiv, Sao Paulo, Verzio and more. Tender and tragicomic, with a rousingly upbeat message in the face of ongoing Russian tyranny, it should generate keen interest on the festival circuit and beyond.
Born in the embattled city if Mariupol, now under Russian occupation, Borets relocated to Kyiv for her own safety a decade ago. There she met the woman she calls the “anti-heroine” of her film, Natalia, a bohemian free spirit in her late sixties who lives in a ramshackle green oasis at in the heart of the city, a tiny haven for animals and flowers squeezed between car parks and towering apartment blocks. After studying film in Poland, and making a handful of shorts, the novice director returned to Kyiv to shoot a portrait of Natalia and her free-wheeling lifestyle, which includes two ex-husbands and a teenage granddaughter.
Flowers of Ukraine opens in the peaceful summer sunshine of 2021, when Natalia’s biggest enemies were disapproving neighbours and powerful property developers attempting to bulldoze her home. But after Russia invades in February 2022, her resistance takes on a larger metaphorical dimension. She becomes emblematic of the whole nation, a plucky underdog facing yet another bloody chapter in its eternal David-vs-Goliath battle against the bullying superpower next door. Though Natalia and her husbands appear to share ambivalent personal feelings towards Russia, the invasion brings up bitter memories of repressive Soviet rule, including periods when Ukrainians were banned from even speaking their own language. “We resisted then just as Ukraine resists now,” she says.
As the sky above Kyiv crackles with loud artillery explosions, the film takes on a shaky, jumpy, scary real-time urgency. But even at the height of Russian bombing, Natalia remains unbowed, refusing to leave her self-made Garden of Eden. “I have nowhere to run,” she shrugs, “I’m not afraid.” Fixing protective wooden shields over her windows, she jokes: “here is the last nail in Putin’s head”. In one scene, Natalia even offers to sign up for military service, but is rejected as too old. She contents herself with wandering though bombed-out cafes and apartments, rescuing houseplants from the rubble.
Flowers of Ukraine zips along with the same anarchic, mirthful, joyfully hedonistic energy as its protagonist. This sometimes means the context becomes a little fuzzy, with secondary characters wandering in and out of the story, then disappearing or even dying off-stage. Jumping between observational snapshots and impressionistic close-ups of fragrant nature, Borets gives the viewer only partial explanations, relying mainly on the sheer force of Natalia’s personality to carry any overall narrative thread. This approach is mostly successful, despite a few loose ends and frustratingly opaque details.
As an aesthetic experience, Flowers of Ukraine is sense-saturating paean to music and laughter, humour and mischief, love and friendship: everything that totalitarian despots like Putin despise. A lively score by Ukrainian folk-rock quartet DakhaBrakha is a great match for Natalia’s punky spirit, their irreverent brand of national celebration underscored by a handful of more explicitly political tracks, notably Russia is a Terrorist State by Kyiv-based electronic artist Tucha. Borets ends this immensely likeable debut with a dedication to grandmothers everywhere. It is a testament to her compact but big-hearted film that its brisk duration leaves you wanting to spend more time hanging out with its feisty, funny, inspirational heroine.
Director: Adelina Borets
Screenwriters: Adelina Borets, Glib Lukianets, Marta Molfar
Cinematography: Bohdan Rozumnyi, Bohdan Borysenko
Editing: Agata Cierniak, Mateusz Wojtynski
Music: DakhaBrakha
Producers: Glib Lukianets, Natalia Grzegorzek
Production companies: Gogol Film (Poland), Koskino (Poland), DI Factory (Poland)
World sales: Gogol Film
Venue: DOK Leipzig film festival (International Documentary Competition)
In Ukrainian
70 minutes
