Ukrainian documentary Fragments of Ice uses Soviet-era home movies to reflect on today’s war

With her film Fragments of Ice, director Maria Stoianova turns towards a family archive in order to tell a broader story about freedom, dreams and heartache. Growing up in the Soviet Union, Stoianova’s family was in a unique position: her father was a figure skating star, which opened up not only opportunities to travel but also access to a video camera. Drawing on 15 tapes created during a period spanning the 1980s and 1990s, Stoianova creates a unique archival project that not only tells the story of her family, but the story of Ukraine, from its role within the Soviet Union to its independence, leading us to the war that plagues the region today.

When Stoianova decided to first revisit these home movies as an adult, long before she imagined making a film, she worried they’d be boring. “What do we judge as the first time?” she says. “I watched them for the first time as a child but we never rewatched them. They were quite distant to me, like something from a previous life.”

It was only later that she realized how unique these tapes were; none of her friends or classmates had video footage of their childhoods. “That’s the strange thing: What is so very close to us might be underestimated.”

She remembers seeing the films again for the first time as an adult. One day she was visiting her father and he had recently digitized them. “The first scene I watched was basically this communist and capitalist having a conversation on the plane. That struck me because it was great filming and a very interesting conversation filled with all kinds of tension. That was the first step towards rewatching everything and the thought of a prospective film. It gave me this sense of tension about how this footage was perceived back then and how we perceive it now, and also the dynamics of how we change and how our perceptions change. Why do we feel the way we do? Why did my father film?”

Incorporating other archival footage as well as contemporary images, the film reaches towards big questions — not only about society, but the very idea of memory itself. Drawing on family and personal archives, rather than images created by those in authority, inevitably reframes political events with a different gaze. Even the medium itself becomes an object of reflection. How does a home movie on 8mm differ from a video captured on an iPhone? There’s a question of texture; how does one medium’s haptic quality come to shape our perception? What happens to our relationship to captured images in a world overwhelmed by them? 

More than just a personal reflection, this question seems to resound amid the current war in Ukraine, which has been called the most “documented” war. How has that shaped public perception of what’s happening on the ground, or has the overwhelming weight of images only served to desensitize people to its impact? “Unlike most wars from before, we have footage from the people,” Stoianova says. “I’m sure it contributes to a kind of entropy. It’s a lot of footage and it grows bigger and bigger.”

The question of what is filmed also raises the question of what isn’t. “Cinema itself is very much about absence. It’s structured around absence — something you want to communicate but can’t. You can’t see it. You can’t grasp it.”

Stoianova explains that even the title of the film alludes to this idea, and the question of melting ice. “I think of absence a lot. One of the first ideas that I found very interesting was that, ‘Okay, my father filmed a lot, and then he filmed less, less and less. What does it mean and how can I show it?’”

Much of the film is shaped in the editing room, and early on, Maria Stoianova worked with Viktor Onysko. “He watched the footage for the first time, of course, making notes and organizing footage. It was very interesting to watch the film through his eyes. We talked a lot about very personal things, about his father and his daughter. He also reflected on his memories of this late Soviet time and his perception. By the end of our first session, we had half of a rough cut, including an intro.”

Stoianova and Onysko planned on doing a second session in the spring of 2022, but that never happened. “Vickor went to the army. It was turbulent for everyone during that year. I didn’t think about coming to the film, maybe sometime in the future. Then in December, we get the tragic news that Viktor died.”

Editor Maryna Maykovska agreed to fill in. “I had a treatment already with this idea of the general dramaturgy and what I want, but the full scale invasion changed my approach,” Stoianova explains. “It gave me a second track; the first track was this vision of Paradise, the imaginary West, as I labelled it. The second track was hidden for me before the invasion and then it took more place in the film.”

This second thread was shaped around the question of identity. What does it mean to be Ukrainian? “How do we fit in with the West? It’s something strange, reinventing yourself in new circumstances to redefine your belonging. Where are you and where do we belong? They desire that we have this colonial identity or this mixed identity. It’s not a real identity.” ■

Fragments of Ice is now playing in Montreal theatres.

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