DICTIONARY OF EMOTIONS IN A TIME OF WAR
Film Poster for "Dictionary of Emotions in a time of war". A collage of images: flowers, magical creatures, and a person with a mask stands with boxes as legs.
DICTIONARY OF EMOTIONS IN A TIME OF WAR
Film Poster for "Dictionary of Emotions in a time of war". A collage of images: flowers, magical creatures, and a person with a mask stands with boxes as legs.
A woman in Kherson navigates the horrors and absurdities of daily life during the initial weeks of the Russian war in Ukraine, adapted from Olena Astasieva's personal accounts from the front lines

DICTIONARY OF EMOTIONS IN A TIME OF WAR

Regular price $129.00
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OFFICIAL SELECTION - DOC NYC | OFFICIAL SELECTION - Ann Arbor Film Festival | "A remarkable piece of filmmaking." - Shortstick Films

War • Ukraine • Russia • Politics • Women's Issues • Processing Trauma through Art • Immigration • Love • Isolation

Date of Completion: 2023 | Run Time: 12 minutes​​ | Language: English, Ukrainian, & Russian with English subtitles | Captions: Yes | Includes: Transcript | Director/Producer: Leah Loftin | Writer: Olena Astasieva | Illustrator/Animator: Aura Lewis | Intro Sequence Animator: Bridget Johnson | Music: Nathan Halpern & Chris Ruggiero | Narrator: Leah Loftin

It is February 2022 and Putin has just invaded Ukraine. First-hand accounts from a woman living in Russian-occupied Kherson illuminate the psychological, pragmatic, and emotional response to an abrupt new life in war time. DICTIONARY OF EMOTIONS IN A TIME OF WAR is an experimental nonfiction film adapted from the testimonials of Olena Astasieva, a Ukrainian playwright living in Kherson. The film is anchored by the first-person narration of Olena Astasieva’s wartime accounts, portrayed in a series of expressionistic vignettes that incorporate illustration and animation, studio art installations, archival footage, contemporary war photography, and fragmented recreations of narrative scenes. Each vignette is entitled by a word that describes an emotional and personal situation experienced since the onset of the war: Fear, Hunger, Love, Cleaning, Guilt, and beyond. The film also features dispatches from friends from both Ukraine and Russia.

Pedro Lima | SHORTSTICK FILMS
"A remarkable piece of filmmaking."

Anita Raswant | DOC NYC
"One woman's powerful daily journal of the atrocities during the war on Ukraine."

AWARDS
Silver Medal in Nonfiction
| 1.4 Awards of Brilliant Filmmaking
Jury Prize | Short Documentary | Lighthouse International Film Festival
Silver Medal in Nonfiction | 1.4 Awards of Brilliant Filmmaking 

FILM FESTIVALS
DOC NYC
Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival
Ann Arbor Film Festival

SCREENINGS
The Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles