Ukrainian film-maker Maksym Nakonechnyi finished war drama Butterfly Vision last February, just days before the Russian invasion. His film tells a fictional story about a shellshocked female Ukrainian soldier held prisoner for two months by Russian-backed separatists in Donbas during the conflict that began in 2014. It’s a tough, unsparing movie, and possibly not the Ukrainian film that anyone wants to watch right now as the country fights for survival. Nakonechnyi’s reflective script, co-written with Iryna Tsilyk, doesn’t have Russia in its crosshairs; instead there are some inconveniently downbeat insights into the divided attitudes the soldier faces when she returns home.
The soldier’s name is Lilya (Rita Burkovska), nicknamed “Butterfly”, an aerial reconnaissance expert who is released in a prisoner swap. We watch her reunion with her family in the format of a news bulletin, with the emojis and comments of online viewers flashing across the screen. One is an OMG about Lilya’s bedraggled appearance: “What happened to her gorgeous hair?” Others are more sympathetic: “It’s hard to imagine what she’s been through.”
The thing is that nobody actually wants to know what Lilya has been through. There are deep scars carved into her back. We find out she was raped by her Russian guard; now she’s pregnant. The army investigator doesn’t ask if she was sexually assaulted (even though it was a well-known tactic and amounts to a war crime). It’s the same with her family. They know Lilya was tortured – horrifyingly, her mum talks about getting calls from the separatists on Lilya’s mobile, with her daughter’s screams in the background. But it’s just not a topic of conversation. Meanwhile, Lilya’s husband has joined a far-right vigilante group that attacks a Roma community. And one scene on a bus feels painful, in the real-life context of a year of hell, of Ukrainian nationalism, pride and patriotism: the driver refuses to accept Lilya’s veteran’s free travel card. The passengers mostly back him up; “It’s not my war,” one shouts.
Butterfly Vision is Nakonechnyi’s feature debut; he has previously worked on documentaries about the conflict, which might explain the texture of truth here, his film’s grim believability. Though she might have turned the dial up, Burkovska conveys Lilya’s depression and anxiety, and finally her resilience, with a muted, powerful performance. This might be one to file away for the future, when the current conflict has ended.
• Butterfly Vision is available from Wednesday on Mubi.
