

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 • IsolationDate 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