Varta: The Daily War in Ukraine

The daily reality of the war in Ukraine

In the documentary series VARTA, Evgen Matvienko and Mariana Shafro, together with their collective Neutrino, film the lives of Ukrainian soldiers: pilots, tank crews, helicopter pilots, women in combat. It’s a honest depiction of the war: the silence between missions, the discomfort, the humor, the grief. VARTA has been shown at Tate Modern and Les Rencontres d’Arles.

The screening of fragments of this documentary series is followed by conversation with Evgen Matvienko and Shafro. How do you film at the frontline? What does it mean to build a cultural archive of your country in war time?

They are joined by Dutch writer Jaap Scholten, who has crossed into Ukraine again and again since 2022 with Protect Ukraine, the aid organisation he founded to supply the Ukrainian army. His books Drie zakken dameskleding, twee cakes Kyiv en een sniper and Nastya in Charkiv are built from the front, from the people he has met there.