A woman in Kherson navigates the horrors and absurdities of daily life during the first weeks of the Russian war on Ukraine, adapted from Olena Astasieva’s personal accounts from the front lines.

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 of the testimonials of Olena Astasieva, a Ukrainian playwright living in Kherson. 

Presented in a series of vignettes—each entitled by words that describe emotional and personal situations experienced since the onset of the war: Fear, Hunger, Love, Cleaning, Guilt, etc.—the film also features dispatches from family and friends from both Ukraine and Russia. The film is anchored by the first-person narration of the accounts, incorporating illustration and animation, studio art installations, archival footage, contemporary war photography, and fragmented recreations of narrative scenes.