Mariinka 4 ½ stars
For my first film of the 62nd Chicago International Film Festival, I saw the documentary Mariinka by Belgian director Pieter-Jan De Pue. You may think that we have seen enough on film about the Ukraine-Russia war which is now in its fifth year. This film takes a different approach that I found to be original and refreshing. De Pue went to Mariinka, a small city in Donetsk Oblast which is in the same region as Mariupol around 2013 with the idea of filming several young people living there over a period of several years. Of course, he had no idea that it would become a war zone that would impact millions of lives and that he would spend over ten years making his movie. His subjects include a family of four brothers living in an orphanage, a female paramedic/medical student and a woman smuggler. The filming started when they were still kids and all of them were orphans or from broken families, something quite common in Ukraine. He follows each of them into adulthood showing their involvement in the seemingly never-ending war of Russian aggression. Mariinka has been completely destroyed, and no one lives there anymore. Of the four brothers, one is in the Ukrainian army, one fights on the Russian side, one has been disabled from combat and the youngest was adopted by an American family living in Mississippi as a toddler. The film gets up close with them in actual combat situations with casualties. The paramedic is filmed as a high school student, training to be a boxer and at a program in the high school auditorium. Later during the war, she is visiting the same auditorium in its bombed-out state as well as visiting the grave site of her mother. The smuggler is filmed as she delivers goods to soldiers and others by riding through the war zone by bicycle. The film is both terrifying and peaceful. One senses the hopelessness that each of these young people must have. It is hard to imagine what the filmmakers had to endure to film these scenes. Each of the last three Documentary Academy Awards have gone to movies about the Ukraine war. These include 20 Days in Mariupol, No Other Land and Mr. Nobody Against Putin. Next year there may well be a fourth.