Between February and April 2025, filmmakers Bernard-Henri Lévy and Marc Roussel filmed the Pokrovsk and Soumy fronts in eastern Ukraine, following the fighters of the Anne de Kyiv Brigade, armed by France. They filmed the daily lives of the inhabitants, bombarded by Russian forces terrorizing civilians on the eve of possible negotiations. They interview President Zelenskyy, who is reluctant to travel to Washington, and then watch the rebroadcast of the meeting with Ukrainian soldiers in a bunker. For the real heroes are the anonymous fighters and civilians who hold their heads high in the face of adversity and suffering, and who are filmed on a daily basis. The final part of Lévy’s “Ukrainian Quartet”, Our War is a diary, peppered with flashbacks in which the author recalls the high points of this war that began in 2014.
Direction
Lévy's narcissism somehow serves the subject — his presence is the point.
Cinematography
Roussel finds beauty in rubble without aestheticizing suffering.
Director
Marc Roussel
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The 'Ukrainian Quartet' places Lévy in a lineage of engaged intellectuals from Malraux to Sontag, for better and worse.
The February-April 2025 filming window captures the exact moment Trump's Ukraine policy collapsed into public humiliation at the White House.
FR
