Ukraine has been in the war since 2022, it is usually said in Germany. For many Ukrainians, especially those who live in the border regions to Russia, the war has been ongoing since 2014 when Russia attacked the Crimea and regions in the Easter of Ukraine. “You practically spent your whole school days in the war,” says a soldier who speaks at the final party of a school class who at the end of Kateryna Gornostais, impressive documentary film, which was premiered in the competition of the Berlinale, “Timestamp“Get their high school diploma. For a year, the director observed the attempt to keep the school system up running despite constant aviation alarm and half -bombed school buildings, to produce something like normality. She filmed elementary school students and high school classes – and formed the material into an impressive document of the resilience of the Ukrainian civilian population.
Between March 2023 and June 2024, Kateryna Gornosta shot in different regions of Ukraine, especially those that are in relative proximity to the front line. In Bucha, a city near the capital of Kyjiw, life runs through on a summer day: parents say goodbye to their children at school, the sun is shining, the war shines far away. But the closer you get the front, the more noticeable and, above all, become more visible. In Saritschne, just 18 kilometers from the front line, the school is destroyed, a blackboard still hangs on the wall, the teaching material lies scattered and destroyed on the ground. How should normal school lessons be even partially under these conditions?
“Timestamp” is an impressive proof of the resilience of the students!
For example, by zoom, how it takes place in another destroyed city: The teacher stands in front of a board on which mathematical formulas can be seen, the computer is built in front of it, the students can be found online for lessons. Only the cinema audience sees that the table actually hangs on a free -standing wall in no classroom, but outdoors because the rest of the school was bombed. Sometimes almost surreal pictures found Gornostai during the filming, which she simply leaves it. Except for occasionally too distinctive music, she dispenses with stylistic exaggeration, which does not seem necessary to emphasize the absurd of the situation.
In the primary school classes in particular, nothing else is taught than during peace, but the war is also a teaching material for older students: metal rods are shaped in a work class, which are used to strengthen bunkers, in a technical class on drones and remote control The technology practiced that is used by Ukraine to resist the Russian troops. In the lower classes, the children are taught in turn, just not to take a toy lying around, because there could be explosives in a ball or a teddy.
When the horror becomes routine
Despite all the attempts to suggest a certain normality, the war becomes part of reality. What he is of course anyway, like the regular booming sirens that warn of air strikes. Students and teachers react surprisingly calmly when the lessons are interrupted once again and the classes go to the air -raid shelter. The calm, yes, serenity of the students is impressive, but on the other hand it also shows how frighteningly normal and routinely routinely becomes in the eastern regions of Ukraine.
How the students, especially the older ones who soon end school, really stand for war would be experienced. In view of the law of war that prevails in Ukraine and the associated restriction of the variety of opinion, there are inevitably no critical voices in “Timestamp”, if there are. When a high school diploma is asked which roles in the military you want to take over, the boys are just answering with a playful enthusiasm which battalion they serve and whether they prefer to drive tanks or fly a jet jet.
Many schools are no longer used and thus become a quiet memorial of a potentially lost generation.
A certain skepticism only rarely seems to ask when a girl asks a soldier how she deals with the experiences on the front, with the constant presence of death. A few days later, this girl will also be received in Sunday clothes and made her high school diploma, celebrate with her friend and maybe forget the reality of the war for a few moments. Last but not least, it is the normal moments that make Kateryna Gornostais film a touching document about everyday life in Ukraine, which, despite everything, is shaped by the hope that the war will be over at some point and a really normal life is possible again becomes.
Conclusion: At first glance, there seems to be more important than to continue to drive schools during a war. But as Kateryna Gornostai shows in her impressive documentary film “Tiemstamp”, it is precisely the students who, despite the war, go to school and make Abitur who represent hope and act as a connection to the future of Ukraine – into one time , in which the war will hopefully be over.
We saw “Timestamp” as part of the Berlinale 2025, where it was shown as part of the official competition.