Over two and half years have passed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Headlines from the region continue to unfurl on a daily basis, while President Volodymyr Zelensky has worked tirelessly on the world stage to maintain allied support in his fight against Vladimir Putin. However, often lost in the conversation about the ever shifting political and tactical maneuvers has been the plight of Ukrainians displaced to countries around the globe. Anastasiia Bortuali’s scrappy documentary Temporary Shelter takes a welcome detour from the chyrons to focus on a people caught between the life they’ve left behind and the uncertain future they face in the vast and unlikely wilds of Iceland.
Bortuali’s own story directly reflects those she captures on camera. The director was studying at the Saint Petersburg State University of Film and Television, working on her diploma film, when the war broke out. Along with her family, they migrated to Asbru, Iceland, where they took up residence in a former NATO base turned refugee camp. It’s here in this former military installation, located just outside Keflavik airport and a one-hour drive from Reykjavík, where Bortuali uses her emerging talent to try and give shape to a situation that, for her and her fellow Ukrainians, is both formless and endless.
In that sense, Temporary Shelter is similarly freeform. Bortuali forgoes formal introductions of her interview subjects and their backgrounds, or markers to indicate the passing of days, weeks, and months. Rather, like the filmmaker herself, we are thrust directly into the community of men and women, fathers and mothers, and young children, as they try to find a balance between transience and permanence. As the refugees keep one eye on the Air Alert app, they navigate learning Icelandic, and completing their paperwork to receive their government-issued kennitala, Iceland’s social security number, that will allow them to apply for employment.
As the new residents of Iceland oscillate between relief, joy, regret, and worry, it’s here where the film finds its emotional resonance. Early in the picture, Maxim, a young first grader, laments that he was too busy to talk to his grandmother before she passed away. Later, a middle-aged woman visits a hairdresser and reveals stress has caused some of her hair to fall out. When a mother learns that a bomb landed 500 meters from her son’s apartment, she falls into worried hysterics, not knowing whether or not he has survived.
Indeed, Temporary Shelter is about the surreal shape survival takes and what it demands from those in its grip. With that in mind, Bortuali keeps political figures mostly absent from the frame; there are no clips of speeches or news reports. Instead, we experience the war through the eyes of the refugees, who receive updates through an informal network of social media and shared dispatches from villages, towns, and cities back home.
Conjuring an intimacy that’s akin to a home movie, Temporary Shelter is occasionally jarred by intrusive editing choices by Dmitrii Novoseltsev and Titti Johnson. From extreme sonic effects to tinted images of war, these moments unwisely tip the film into experimental territory. Enacted to perhaps echo the startling reminders the refugees face each day of the war they’ve escaped, these moments push the audience out of the film’s grip, when the picture has otherwise worked so hard pull them close. Thankfully, these intermittent cuts are few, but they do signal the decisions of a first-time filmmaker and the kind of stylistic tic that a maturing Bourtuali will hopefully do away with in future pictures.
Iceland is a country of opposites. The island that was formed by searing, molten lava spewed from still active volcanoes, is also covered in ice. It’s a remote nation that’s known for the tight-knit bond between its citizens. Magic and spellcraft sit easily alongside the hard realities of life in a rugged, beautiful landscape. It just might be that these very contradictions are exactly what makes it so easy for Ukrainians call Iceland home, at least for now. Temporary Shelter is compelling look at how people in crisis are making a home where they can, even as they dream of returning to their homeland soon.
Director: Anastasiia Bortuali
Screenplay: Anastasiia Bortuali
Cast: Maksym Prystupa, Oleksandr Prystupa, Julia Poliatska, Svitlana Kuchma, Nikolay Alien, Roman Melnytskiy, Inna Holenko, Tymofei Kalinin, Oleksii Kovalov, Vladyslav Stohnushenko, Yana Stohnushenko, Oleksandr kuznietsov, Dmytro Voloshenko, Nataliia Zhyrnova, Zhenia Litvinenko
Producers: Helgi Felixson
Cinematography: Anastasiia Bortuali, Maja Adamska, Helgi Felixson, Olha Yevenko
Editing: Dmitrii Novoseltsev, Titti Johnson
Music: Eovaro Egilsson
Sound: Jacob Felixson
Production companies: IRIS FILM EHF (Iceland)
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF Docs)
In Ukrainian, Russian
97 minutes