Slava Leontyev was born in Kharkiv into a family of biologists. Together with his future wife, Anya Stasenko, he studied at the Kharkiv State School of Art, then at the Kharkiv Art and Industrial Institute. For a long time he lived in Crimea, and after the annexation he returned to Kharkiv.
Slava and Anya make original porcelain in a style they call ‘plastic in terms of graphics’. Leontyev mainly focuses on the concept and form of ceramic figures, while Stasenko focuses on their colouring. The style of their works includes the use of bright polychrome glaze, references to folklore and mythology, and a combination of humour and lyricism. As a rule, these are small figures, mostly in the form of animals, birds, insects, snails, fish or even bizarre creatures. The items are painted in detail.
Everything changed in 2014. When the Russian invasion began, Slava and his friends enlisted in the Territorial Defence Forces. The training, however, left much to be desired, so the volunteers set up a Kharkiv branch of the Ukrainian Legion, where Leontyev specialised in marksmanship. In 2022, the artist was mobilised, but for health reasons he could not be on the front line, so he did what he already knew well: he taught recruits, who often had no military experience, how to shoot.
The American co-director of Porcelain War, Brendan Bellomo, and co-writer Aniela Sidorska, found Slava and Anya through their work. Initially, they planned to make a short animation that would bring the figures to life. After the full-scale invasion, Brendan called Slava. He told him about the nature of his work, and then Brendan suggested that he film what was happening around him. That's how the feature film began to take shape. Neither Slava nor Anya, nor their friend Andriy Stefanov, who is also an artist, had any experience of filming before. However, artistic precision is inherent in every frame.
Yet (although such informative detail clearly played a role in the award competition) the film wins thanks to a special polyphony that forms a fascinating whole.
This multilayering has both dramatic and visual aspects. We follow the lives of Anya and Slava. We look at their works. We worry about Andriy, who had to leave his children, who were taken to evacuation. Full of adrenaline and a sense of danger is the story about the SSO Saigon, a unit of the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces, which Slava is in charge of. It has its own heroes: Johnny and Corsair, August and Printer, Deaver and Katya perform extremely risky tasks, have their moments of peace or joy. One of the most memorable episodes is when Katya rushes to the seriously wounded soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces under fire and saves them both.
A lyrical, intimate layer: sun-drenched landscapes of groves and meadows, through which the joyful dog Frodo runs, close-ups of flowers, dragonflies, snails, porcelain animals and dandelion parachutes. It is dominated by saturated colours, baroque pretentiousness, cinematic still lifes to the music of DakhaBrakha.
The view of everyday life, a traditional documentary record: the everyday life of the characters, the training at the shooting range, the subtleties of working with porcelain. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Anna could not bring herself to paint. Andrii evacuated his daughters, not knowing whether he would ever see them again. Slava was and still is a civilian man, but he sacrifices his time and energy to a necessary evil - the war effort.
The war: footage of destroyed city blocks, torn reports from the front line, drone footage, GoPro cameras, rescuing the wounded, destroying enemies. The story of Katya, who rescues the Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers in almost complete darkness, saying ‘now, darling, now’, is a separate emotional story.
And all these elements are consistently combined in a single fascinating, and importantly, narrative. Porcelain War is an act of exquisite resistance. Ukraine fights fearlessly and gracefully.