Mother (Mama)

Origin and Year: Ukraine, 2021	Director: Taras Tkachenko
Runnning time: 2 x 50 min

Q&A after the screening.

Nina, a doctor and mother of two from Zhytomyr, Ukraine, hasn’t heard from her son Vitaliy long enough not to worry about him every day. When her daughter finds a video on the internet clearly showing that Vitaliy, a soldier deployed in Donbas, has fallen into captivity, the family decides to take immediate action. Nina travels alone by train across the demarcation line to buy her son out. But after several clashes with reality, she too remains in eastern Ukraine, where she continues to try to reach her son. The series, supported by the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, is a unique television piece that thematises the ongoing war. It is inspired by true stories, and although it treats the subject and characters somewhat predictably, it presents an opportunity for viewers from other countries to learn about the perspective prevailing in the western part of Ukraine and, thanks to the performance of Olesya Zhurakivska as the mother, to feel the urgency of the situation. The miniseries attempts to understand the mentality of those whom Nina meets on her journey, in the jargon of the local newspapers thus “talk to the Donbas”.