art filmmaker
Between Before and After is a 56-minute performative film inspired by Lina Kostenko’s Berestechko and the war dreams of Ukrainians. Moving between myth and reality, it follows figures such as Bogdan Khmelnytsky, Ukraine, The Witch, The Child, the Refugees, and The Artist, each searching for Ukraine. Through a mythopoetic language, the film reflects on history, war, and cultural memory, offering a poetic meditation on identity, loss, and resilience.
BEFOREWORD
The intention behind the film was born at the very start of the full-scale invasion. In the first week I began collecting war dreams of Ukrainians; at the same time, I felt an urge to reread Lina Kostenko’s novel Berestechko. At their intersection, the first ideas for the project emerged. In March 2022 I was invited to the Harun Farocki Institute residency in Berlin, where conscious research and scriptwriting began.
The film grows directly out of the immediate experience of war and the need to (re)create a national myth. Work on this film followed the stages of the psyche processing trauma—not only individually but across generations. Under extreme circumstances, the boundary between real and unreal fades; the subconscious, archetypal, and collective come to the surface beyond time and space. When everything your life was built on is blown into the air—like a tree torn from the ground—you search for roots.
Making this film became a healing process for me and for other Ukrainians in exile, who dedicated themselves to it despite displacement and uncertainty. For collaborators from other countries, it offered a chance for empathy, an attempt to comprehend. The strength was born from this connection. The process of the film’s creation is an integral part of it—a miniature of the intention, a wish to extend it on a larger scale by showing the film.
THE IMPACT OF WAR ON INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE PSYCHE //
THE ROLE OF DREAMS
Rather than delivering a statement, the film seeks to reveal the inner experience of war. What started to happen outside—death, suffering, ruination—was almost impossible to comprehend; yet even harder was processing what happened inside, in our psyche, our thoughts, our hearts.
In the dreams I collected, I witnessed how deeply they reflected the impact of war on both the individual and collective psyche. Through recurring motifs, repetitive symbols, and premonitory images, I saw not only the inner world of individuals, but also a shared experience and the emergence of a new history for the nation. Therefore I searched for ways to connect the individual psyche with the collective experience of war, the inner self with the war itself.
Dreams entered the film on multiple levels—as audiovisual inspiration, symbolic weight, narrative thread—ultimately shaping its collage-like, dreamy structure.
THE ROLE OF BERESTECHKO BY LINA KOSTENKO //
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Furthermore, the film seeks to place the war within historical and cultural contexts, connecting times and tracing causes and consequences along a historical timeline. A central role is played by Lina Kostenko’s historical novel in verse Berestechko—its quotations form the basis of many monologues in the film, its protagonist Bohdan echoes in the film’s main character, and its presence is marked in the titles of the chapters.
Lina Vasylivna Kostenko—Ukrainian poet, journalist, writer, publisher, and leading representative of the Sixtiers poetry movement—is one of Ukraine’s foremost voices. She has been, for me, not only a great inspiration but also a role model of what it means to be both Human and Artist. Berestechko depicts one of Ukraine’s greatest historical tragedies: the defeat of Bohdan Khmelnytsky at Berestechko in 1651. Khmelnytsky, the real historical Cossack leader who fought for unity and independence in the 17th century, saw at Berestechko the collapse of his greatest hopes and achievements.
For me personally, this novel is a treasure—about love, choice and responsibility, about loss, defeat, and the acceptance of both; a poetic meditation on life, death, and (un)freedom. First encountered as part of the school curriculum, I reached for it instinctively when the full-scale war began. It became an anchor for survival in the darkest times, resonating with my reflections on Ukrainian history and national narratives. Guided by intuition, I chose quotations from Berestechko that became a meaningful and contextual layer of the film. I was also deeply moved by Kostenko’s portrayal of Bohdan from a female authorial perspective: we see not only a leader of a nation, a man of vision who gave his life to it, but also a man who lost everything—his country, his people, his love, his sense of purpose. A man who, in weakness, found strength; who was able to accept his defeat and admit his mistakes.
Lina Kostenko herself watched the film and gave permission to use the quotations, saying: “Let young people create, and this one is talented.” To me, those words meant more than I can ever express.
MONOLOGUE IN THE FILM
The film plays with the monologue on several levels: from the literal monologues spoken by the character Bohdan, composed from Berestechko, to the idea of the film itself as a monologue across centuries and generations. At times, the film contradicts its own statements or searches for other perspectives—moving from emotionally charged declarations (“How much we suffered with suffering inhuman! How much those strangers hurt us! But have we ever oppressed our neighbors, their language?”) to self-reflection (“With our endless suffering, about ourselves we only keep muttering. And if you look around more carefully, everyone in the world is someone’s enemy. There is not so much goodness anywhere, of course. The law of war, its hard course.”), from personal feelings (“A drop of my thirst, a patch of happiness on my field of thorns, will you forgive me my helplessness?”) to the pain of the community (“Give reason to our hearts and truth to our lips. Shall we heal that terrible pain one day?”), and to eternal existential questions (“And you keep asking Fate: What am I living for?”).
Created in a time in-between, and suggesting no other times, the film poses questions and searches for answers on both personal and global levels. It does not offer a single resolution, but instead reveals sparks of life and hope within darkness and pain (“Oh, there is only one freedom in life, one freedom — the one I have inside!”).
ON FILM STRUCTURE AND CHARACTERS //
COLLAGE
“Collage results from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole” — this is the approach I took to the film: in its structure, its storytelling, and its use of collage elements. The unifying thread of this collage is the mark of war, inscribed on each character, each storyline, each scene. I chose this form because for me it resonates with both the nature of dreams and the psychological state of living through trauma.
The film weaves several storylines and is divided into nine chapters, framed by a Foreword and an Afterword — the contrasting scenes of an improvised performance by The Artist They highlight the tension between inner experience and the attempt to express it outwardly, forming a bridge between the symbolic and the real.
The character Ukraine can be read as an artistic alter-ego of The Artist, but above all as a symbol of the Motherland. Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, drawn from history and from Berestechko, reflects on the past, while Ukraine tries to glimpse the future. The Child embodies hope for life, for future generations and cultural continuity, and also serves as an alter-ego of Bohdan. The Witch, another figure from Berestechko, speaks with the voice of the ancestors, connecting past, present, and future and trying to give a warning.
The dancers embody the collective image of the Ukrainian nation: losing home, searching for belonging, and returning to Ukraine, to whom they remain bound. Their behavior is shaped by and responsive to Ukraine. At the same time, their journey resonates with the biblical story of Moses and the nomads—though here it becomes “a search for Ukraine within Ukraine”.
ETHNIC AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURE
It was important for me to present Ukrainian culture not as a passive heritage, but as a living, active force—studied, acknowledged, and rethought in relation to the contemporary. This vision permeates every element of the film. The costumes, for example, combine ethnic elements with the designer’s own vision. The music blends traditional instruments with ambient and FX compositions, uniting Ukrainian folk singing styles with contemporary texts, and weaving ethnic songs and motifs with both respect for heritage and a free artistic approach.cThe same applies to decorative, linguistic, and other elements of the film, as well as to the graphic design, which merges book Cyrillic with graffiti typography.
AFTERWORD
With this film, I want to tell a story that can be felt and related to on a human level. My approach combines personal and global perspectives, developing the same motifs on both levels. The characters cope with loss and despair brought by war and search for their own paths through it. At the same time, they tell the story of the Ukrainian nation. On a global scale, the film raises universal questions about freedom, belonging, identity, love, coping with loss and trauma, taking a stand, making choices, and regaining sense and hope.
The question of life and death is one of the central existential motifs of humankind, present in art, religion, and philosophy across epochs and continents. This film revolves around these two notions, using them as an entry point to ask deeper questions and to offer a poetic, symbolic vision on it in relation to war.
Written, directed, edited by
Marichka Lukianchuk
Cast
Valeriia Berezovska - Ukraine
Andryi Neretin - Bohdan Khmelnytsky
Ivan Palii - The Child
Olga Ivanova - The Witch
Marichka Lukianchuk - The Artist
Margo – The Artist’s Dog
Parez - Horse with assistance of Tamara Bujarski
Dance choreography
Dayana Mankovska
Dancers
Anastasia Rozhkova
Yelyzaveta Mokrytska
Inna Gosha
Maria Filippova
Mielania Kobalia
Nataliia Zhdan
Oksana Chupryniuk
Oryna Kuzmina
Camera and lights
Joanna Skupinska
Colorist
Nour Yazbeck
Costume designers
Denys Sadoviy
Virginie Perne
Font designer
Dmytro Patsay
Poster designer
Rosario Díaz Roigt
music composing, sound design, arrangement
Andryi Neretin
Sound mixing and mastering
Ihor Hromadskiy
Songwriters
Mary Polishchuk
Igor Rastivskyi
Singers
Solomiya Kyrylova
Igor Rastivskyi
Make up for The Witch
Diana Ohanesian
Backstage photography
Oryna Kuzmina
Angelina Andriushina
Oleksandra Vdovychenko
Voice over and singing recorded at Cashmere Radio
with assistance of Yuliia Vlaskina
Studio shooting took place at
BBK Berlin
Edited at the studio of
Transmediale Berlin
Quotes for the dialogues and voice over taken from
novel Berestechko by Lina Kostenko
Translated for subtitles by
Tania Rodionova
Made with the support of the Harun Farocki Institut during the Harun Farocki Residency, facilitated by the Artists at Risk (AR)-Ukraine Solidarity Group and funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe of the State of Berlin.