High in the Carpathian mountains, away from the immediate dangers of war, a group of friends finds a brief sense of freedom — carrying both the lightness of escape and the weight of reality waiting below.

Summer portrait of my grandfather’s home — a tender look at a rural place, where ordinary life continues, carrying memory, warmth, and time.

Overcrowded beaches. The smell of pine trees baking in the sun. Sticky fingers from fruit growing wild and sweet. Long hikes in the mountains, followed by late-night conversations and wine on the shore of the Black Sea. This was Crimea. Before Russia's occupation in 2014, it was a place to slow down. To rest. To wander. To feel alive. The footage in this section comes from the personal archive of Maryna Levytska, a visual artist who grew up in Crimea. She left her home in 2022 and has not been able to return or see her family since. These video recordings have become her way back home—holding onto a place now defined by memory, distance, and longing.

Kyiv's electric pulse, a mix of joy, urgency, humor, creativity, and a kind of stubborn aliveness that refuses to fade. The footage blends two timelines: Kyiv in the summer, full of movement and color, and winter, when Russian strikes on the power grid trigger rolling blackouts that can last 8–10 hours. During outages, generators fill the soundscape, and shop fronts become the only light on the streets.