With this personal video diary from Kyiv, artist Hanna Trofimova manages to make us comprehend something of how the war infiltrates and destroys life and everyday routines, even if one’s own apartment has not been hit by a bomb yet. Images of an oppressive “normality” between alarm sirens and explosions are combined with the touching words of a young woman who tries not to lose herself and her life to the new reality.

“Sex does strange things to people!” This sentence reverberates from her childhood. What did her mother mean? What fears did she pass on to Emma? The budding filmmaker sets up the camera in her mother’s apartment, invites mum’s friends, creates an open atmosphere. Coby opens up more and more, talks about a repressed topic. At the same time, she gets to show a wholly different side of herself, performing song and dance numbers in front of her daughter’s lens.

The summer after graduation: Own life plans and expectations of the parents’ generation collide. While Shuli films his friends with a Super 8 camera, his mother wants nothing more than for him to get married. She resolutely refuses to speak about the fact that her son loves men and has been living with his boyfriend in Beijing for years. A deafening silence. Idyllic family pictures are overlaid by a long overdue confrontation.