There can’t possibly be a more timely film in the Berlinale lineup this year than Kateryna Gornostai’s Timestamp, an extraordinary deep-cover documentary about the effects of war in everyday Ukraine that, despite the harsh front-page relevance of its subject matter, has a beautiful old-fashioned formalism in its editing and composition. But like the wartime films of Humphrey Jennings — notably Fires Were Started and London Can Take It! — it is also a celebration of national character, depicting a generation that has only known conflict and yet, somehow, refuses to be defined by it. Walter Salles’ Oscar nominee I’m Still Here dramatizes a similar story of resistance, but Timestamp is all the more remarkable for capturing the real thing, and in real time.
Shot between March 2023 and June 2024 Gornostai’s film takes us on a whirlwind tour of Ukraine, to towns and cities both near to and far from the front line. The number of destinations we visit is dizzying given the sheer size of Ukraine (and the blitz of very brief intertitles can be distracting), but it soon becomes clear that this is a very large country tied together in the most tragic way conceivable. In fact, the opening moments play out like an elegy for the whole nation: a school boarded up, with empty corridors and empty classrooms. What ought to be the safest, most sacrosanct place in any sane society has been trashed — and to what end?
But the school is not entirely empty, and this is the world that Timestamp is about to take us into, a place where, astonishingly, life goes on. We never see the war, but we often hear it; very early on, a children’s pageant is disrupted by an air-raid siren, and the youngest are taken down into a shelter. Gornostai’s camera follows them in, and the scenes are unbelievable: teachers desperately leading singalongs to take everyone’s minds off what might be happening outside, and the children merrily joining in. Only the terrified face of a crying little girl reflects the enormity of what this all represents.
But this isn’t even the half of it. Though it deals with the aftermath of airstrikes — “This is our kitchen,” a woman tells us from the blackened wreckage of a civilian housing block — Timestamp is more concerned with the way war destroys innocence as surely as it tears apart bricks and mortar. We see teenagers handling firearms, being taught to use tourniquets (which gives the film its rather oblique title) and lectured on the hazards of “bleeding out”. Smaller children, meanwhile, are taught what to pack in their overnight bags in case of evacuation — and, more frighteningly, to stay away from discarded toys that may have been boobytrapped with bombs and mines.
Interestingly, though there is a great love of country here — Gornostai’s camera lingers on a pair of blue and yellow socks, and during one of its many festive scenes shows a little boy in a Spider-Man outfit rubbing shoulders with little girls in national costume — there is more of a sense of national pride than ironclad patriotism. Teachers persistently warn their pupils against joining the military, and some have even written a passionately pacifist song that goes, “I hate you, war… I don’t want to shoot at people… I beg you, don’t play war.” In fact, even a visiting soldiers paints a harrowing picture of life during wartime, days, weeks and months spent freezing, starving and loading up corpses for burial.
In spite of all this, Gornostai paints a surprisingly optimistic portrait, building towards a prom party where a bunch of teenage girls finish up their funny little TikTok movie with an Abba soundtrack. By this time, we feel as welcome in their world as the director clearly does, and the footage she gets is as close as you could possibly find to a NatGeo study of human wildlife (Nicolas Philibert’s intimate 2002 film Etre et Avoir must surely have been an influence here). It sometimes meanders, but then, that sometimes feels like it’s part of the point: when things become too comfortable, too cozy, too normal, a siren sounds and reminds us where we are. Should the war in Ukraine seem too far away for your sympathy, Timestamp is a reminder — and a warning — that it can come to all of us.
Title: Timestamp
Festival: Berlin (Competition)
Director-screenwriter: Kateryna Gornostai
Distributor: Best Friend Forever
Running time: 2 hrs 5 mins
