“A portrait of that reconciliation with our mortality and our desire to beat it.”

“I died there, at war.”

When your life is on the line day after day, your perspective on death changes. The fear of it is gone, which in turn also changes the way you live your life. “To go through war without consequences is impossible,” says one of the men followed over a period of twelve years in Yuliia Hontaruk’s To Die To Live, and the consequences are dire because life has less meaning when the idea is engrained that it can be over at any moment. A fragmentary account of the struggle to adapt to civilian life after a prolonged period of looking death in the eye, To Die To Live would make a good pairing with 2000 Meters to Andriivka in how it treats the aftermath and the black hole that follows the intensity of war.

The film follows three men, Shakhta, Dancer, and Potter (call signs, not their real names), starting in 2014 with their participation in the Shyrokyne Offensive, in which Ukrainian troops fought Russian-backed separatists from the strategic village of Shyrokyne, east of Mariupol. Moments of camaraderie and optimism are mixed with hiding from shelling in trenches filled with mud to your ankles. In one poignant moment Shakhta shows a collection of mobile phones, taken from the dead bodies of fellow soldiers so they don’t fall into enemy hands; it’s hard for him to talk about it, because each one of those phones stands for a dead comrade.

Shortly after the offensive Ukraine and Russia signed an agreement, and soldiers could return to their civilian lives. But how do you pick up life after what you have witnessed and after having been close to death for months? All three men were volunteers with a ‘normal’ existence before all this, but just going back as if nothing happened is impossible. There are indeed consequences. Shakhta’s family life erodes over time. He has started a cleaning business, but after his marriage goes bust he falls into a negative spiral; staying in the workshop of Potter, who has picked up his trade as a metalworker and plans to start his own business, Shakhta almost seems to long for war again, a return to a routine that was structured and where he could feel alive, even while facing death. He contrasts service in the army, where everybody works together on a common goal, with the naked individualism of civilian life, where people only look out for themselves.

The other two men and their struggles aren’t as well-defined as Shakhta’s. Potter has plans, but Potter also seems forever holed up in his workshop, only coming out to get lost in pounding beats at a local club. Dancer takes up his ballroom dancing again, which leads to a stunning shot of men in full army fatigues twirling with women in appropriate gowns. But the film keeps returning to Shakhta, perhaps the most interesting character of the three because his plight is the clearest.

When the film reaches 2022 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s inevitable that the men return to the front. It’s like war will never let them out of its grip again. It’s almost sad to see someone like Shakhta in the one place where he feels he belongs. Not a man with a death wish, but also not a man afraid of dying. Without much adornment, Hontaruk shows that war becomes part of your fabric, and the will to live when facing death is strong. To Die To Live is a portrait of that reconciliation with our mortality and our desire to beat it, and within the canon of documentaries on Ukraine’s fight since 2014, this is an important entry because it isn’t afraid to show the the toll war takes on those who fight for their country.