“A scattershot image of the effects of war on a community being ripped apart, yet also a hopeful story about human perseverance.”

“He’s my enemy now.”

In April 2014 the small Ukrainian town of Mariinka was captured by Russian forces, marking the first time the town changed hands. It would not be the last, as this place on the front line has been heavily contested for over a decade now. Ten years of violence have left immense scars, and Mariinka has turned into a ghost town with barely a soul still living there. Belgian documentarian Pieter-Jan De Pue was in it for the long haul when he started following several young inhabitants of Mariinka in 2014, a collection of portraits for a documentary that takes the town’s name as its title. Being on the front line means division. Division between friends, division within families even. Partly playing out like a Greek tragedy, Mariinka is a scattershot image of the effects of war not just on a town, but on the community living in it, yet it’s also a hopeful story about human perseverance.

The film portrays five young people living under the scourge of war. There’s Natasha, an amateur boxing talent who became a medic in the Ukrainian army; Angela, who for better or worse still lives in Mariinka and smuggles goods in both directions; and the three brothers Ruslan, Mark, and Daniil, who have become separated by war. Mark fights on the Ukrainian side, while his brother Ruslan has chosen Russia. Meanwhile, their youngest sibling was adopted at an early age by a family in Mississippi and now goes by Samuel. Their fourth brother Maksim (not heavily featured in the film) is in a wheelchair as a result of the war. The lives of these young people are interconnected and filled with trauma, and their commonality is a small town on the front line.

Frankly, not all of their stories are equally interesting. Seeing the youngest brother grow up in safety far removed from the battlefield is heartening, and the contrast of him playing Call of Duty or joining his family on a shooting range while his brothers are in the midst of the real deal is a nice juxtaposition, yet every time the scene shifts to the US it deflates the film. Seeing Samuel/Daniil’s older brothers deal with the hardships of war and showing the perspective from both sides of the front invites far more reflection and the opportunity for a glimpse of humanity in all its facets. Most remarkable are the interactions the two of them have via video calls, which become far more intense and combative after Russia’s 2022 invasion. Up until that moment there was perhaps a glimmer of hope the men would be reunited again at some point, but the rift is now complete.

It’s the two women that get the most attention though, in particular Natasha, and their portraits are the most well-rounded in the film. Angela’s role in this war is a peculiar one – a smuggler with a bicycle moving back and forth between the two sides unperturbed, navigating through the rubble of the town while tracer rounds fly by mere meters away – it’s an incredible image. When she is handed a small child by its mother to take across to the relative safety of the Ukrainian side, this is perhaps as much an act of bravery as of total madness. But it is in her quieter moments that the true drama comes out, alone in her Mariinka home, or what’s left of it. Moments of introspection and the memories of her deceased mother lead to the film’s most harrowing line: “Why did God create me?“

Natasha’s story is as filled with trauma as Angela’s, and her current role as a medic only compounds that. Some of the more hard-hitting moments of her job wouldn’t look out of place on The Pitt. Her backstory, partly told through pre-war footage of her high school graduation, includes the death of a mother too, and what led to it is hair-raising. Her segments also allow for a bit of artistry and poetry in De Pue’s work, containing staged sequences that balance the heavy (and bloody) moments of pain and suffering. Natasha is a quiet girl, the only female in her medical crew, and in many ways has barely outgrown her teenage years. One can see a classic case of PTSD brewing behind those silent eyes, no matter how tough as nails she appears and how much she holds her own in this male-dominated and stressful environment.

The problem with Mariinka is that it gives the viewer hardly any time to breathe and contemplate each of these individual portraits, jumping back and forth between its subjects too quickly to let their stories settle in. This makes for a restless documentary, which may be fitting for a film about a chaotic environment like a war zone, but lessens the impact. Limiting the number of people portrayed, starting with cutting out Samuel’s segments which provide a contrast the film doesn’t really need, would have been a good idea. As it is, Mariinka is too uneven to become the engrossing portrait of shattered youth it could have been, although some parts are truly impressive.