The upcoming film tells the story of a contemporary artist, ROMAN, who takes part in exhibitions all over the world with video installations about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Going through a midlife crisis, reinforced by alcohol problems, the protagonist tries to find a way to understand his parents, his wife, his lover, and himself. I like the idea of talking about the midlife crisis, uncertainty, alcoholism, and war through contemporary art. The film will be based on documentary footage that I have been accumulating over the past three years by shooting my family and friends. Thus, the concept of the film is to recreate this material into fiction using equipment with a documentary-like aesthetic. In my previous works, I have already worked with the “re-shooting” of video — be it archival footage from the life of an ordinary Kyiv family (the short film NAIL) or forensic footage related to investigative experiments by law enforcement officers (my feature debut LA PALISIADA). In this project, the main reference for me will be my own video observations and photographs of the deoccupied cities of Ukraine (Bucha and Hostomel). The idea is to create a feature film out of the documentary material, preserving genuine mise-en-scène and live dialogues. While editing these documentary observations at the development stage, I noticed an almost finished film with deep and rich characters. Since in this case we will be dealing with fiction, I began to expand, rethink, and organize the events recorded in the documentary medium. Throughout my life, I have been constantly dealing with photography, so the profession to which the protagonist will be related will be organic for me in the context of the story. One of my best friends is a contemporary artist, and I want to shoot him as an actor in this story. I had the experience of shooting him in a previous film, and he worked on two of my short films as a cinematographer. In almost every film, I combine professional and non-professional actors. I can't say that it's my style; I just can't usually find actors who are similar to the characters I'm looking for. So, this is most likely how it will be here. But the people who will be acting will know exactly what they need to do in the shot, and usually, they are also from this field, so they understand what I want from them. Speaking of the film's concept, it will resemble a constantly repeating kaleidoscope of observations of characters in similar situations, where body language and the mechanics of camera and character movement in the frame will be very important, creating a narrative and setting the pace of the story. The dialogues will be taken from the documentary footage I have shot, but will be supplemented with my own remarks in order to go deeper into the essence of the topic I am exploring and the future rhythm of the film. It is important to emphasize that the characters will not have an unambiguous type of characterization defined in advance but rather will be formed and revealed in front of our eyes with all their flaws and advantages because this is the “uncertain” and “ambiguous” world we live in today. I see the visual approach in building single-frame shots that will emphasize the flow of time and the interaction of characters with each other and the environment. This decision occurred after reviewing the documentary footage I had accumulated, which was shot in long takes. Therefore, at this stage of development, the cameraman and I decided to shoot the film on a DSLR camera, which would emphasize the “documentary nature” of the film and the character's profession. In my opinion, if I combine information from real-life observations with fictional methods of expression, I will get a completely new image quality and unique content of the frame. The image will often be characterized by bright colors that can be seen on the pages of glossy magazines. The space will consist of many small details: children's toys from the protagonist's past, bottles of half-drunk alcohol, etc. The disorder of details in the frame will characterize the chaos inside the protagonist and the destruction around him because of the war. The artistic design of the scenes will correspond to the psycho-emotional state of the protagonist: overcrowded with props in the parents' apartment, the sterility and minimalism of the psychotherapist's office, the imperfection of the protagonist and his wife's apartment. Nevertheless, the compositions of the shots will resemble professionally taken photographs. The editing between episodes will often resemble the displacement of one shot by another: not letting the scene end, we will get into the next episode right in the middle of some action.