CPH:DOX Premieres ‘A Poem For Little People,’ Documentary Celebrating “Courage And Resilience Of Ordinary Ukrainians”

deadline.com:

Less than two weeks after 20 Days in Mariupol won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, another important film about Ukraine has bowed on the world stage.

A Poem for Little People, directed by Ivan Sautkin, held its international premiere Thursday at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen. It screens again on Saturday.

In cinéma vérité style, the film documents the most vulnerable people on front lines of the war in Ukraine, and the volunteers of an evacuation team who risk their lives to save them. “Through its two parallel plotlines, the film follows the exploits of a volunteer evacuation team in the front lines of Eastern Ukraine, led by young, precociously stoic Anton, as well as the wartime daily lives and unlikely friendship of two elderly women – pragmatic Zinaida and dreamy, starry-eyed Taisia – who decided to stay at their homes in the now de-occupied Chernihiv region,” according to a synopsis of the documentary. “While Anton faces the most visceral horrors of war on a daily basis during his team’s urgent, desperate attempts to rescue the most vulnerable, who are often reluctant or unwilling to leave, Zinaida and Taisia seek to pursue any forms of resistance within their power – from praying and writing poetry to hiding historic plaque and reporting intelligence to the Ukrainian military.” In a statement, Sautkin said, “At the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I, like most of my colleagues, was confused.

Everything I was doing until that moment lost its value. The world of war is radically different from everything we are used to.