Flashing lights, strobe effects, and pounding music in an underground club provides an alternate world for Ukrainian youth whose lives have been upended by Russia’s invasion. Five years into the protracted war, men, and women in their twenties find their own ways of coping with the ongoing conflict. Their day to day existence is threatened by the unpredictability of skirmishes with the enemy and surprise attacks from aerial bombardment. Attitude towards killing and mortality have changed. Their own survival and mental stability depend on shared experiences of acceptance that the war they never chose is an ongoing reality without an end in sight.
The documentary feature film, “Black Sunflowers,” is directed by 38-year-old photographer and filmmaker James Marcus Haney. Exploring the lives of young Ukrainians amid the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the movie premiered at the 51st Toronto International Film Festival in September 2026.
Navigating the precarious distance between the frontlines and the home front, when university students in other parts of the world are just starting to carve a niche and see where their knowledge and skills can be applied to chart their future, young Ukrainians subject to compulsory conscription see their own dreams and future already being ended. Meanwhile, those who try to avoid active frontline service through clandestine means live in fear and shame as their friends and others they know are getting injured, maimed, or killed in combat.
“Black Sunflowers” is a pivotal film at a time when public sentiment is flailing as war drags on. It focuses on the side of aggrieved Ukrainian civilians and reluctantly conscripted soldiers who are trapped in an impasse because of a declining international support and rising war fatigue in Europe. The reduction of U.S. financial and military support dampens the morale of families who have to endure the staggering economic toll of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The disillusioned and war-weary youth in the fringes of battlefields are either drifting in tight circles trying to control the only thing they know how which is their cars, while others who are stuck could only roam aimlessly in the periphery of suicide.
Flight or fight response of real life characters are conveyed through this heartbreaking documentary that brings to the fore the grim and sad realities of war.
Subjects candidly share their frustrations and anger at those at the helm of all the mayhem and tragedy that has befallen their homeland.
Triggered by Russia’s revisionist border claims, the schism is not as clear-cut as it seems even for those who are in the thick of the fight resisting the annexation. What makes resistance sometimes dispiriting is the fact that some parents of these young soldiers who have been risking their lives at the frontlines actually support the annexationist claims of the enemy occupier.
Risking their lives in battle or captivity and fighting for what they believe is deemed necessary for their own country’s survival, the expectation that the most valued moral support should come from a parent is thwarted by an opposing ideal much thicker than the blood of one’s own. The divisive politics of war seep through communities once neighbourly, triggering intense domestic disagreements now spilling over familial bonds that threaten the breakdown of society at large.
Suffering from war trauma and PTSD caused by displacement, the world that has turned upside down for every youth cannot be erased from their socio-psychological consciousness. No matter how hard they might try to find an escape or ways to adapt to their new warped normal, either they are constantly seeking the adrenaline rush by driving around blind corners that teem with screwed up excitement and frantic anticipation of arming themselves for direct contact, or shutting themselves off through medication from the inescapable images they have absorbed while in active service.
Film Director Haney maximizes B-roll and archival footages in between main interviews of embattled young minds who, with their dissolute frankness and dark humour, is contrasted with the eerie presence of imminent danger and deafening silence of anguish on anonymous faces in body bags lined up for identification.
Twenty-one-year old Nikoletta, born in Odesa, Ukraine, used to be a nature photographer. Entering the fifth year of the full-scale war, she thinks about five-year old children who will know nothing but war in this life. “And yet, it feels like the world just watches.”
Nikoletta simply wanted to to do all the things that girls her age who don’t live in a war torn country normally do. “Russia has taken time with my family away from me, because I’m constantly documenting the war (casualties and bomb ruins) somewhere away from them.”
Any young citizen from a nation of relative serenity and safety might find such predicament distressing, and rightly so, for such documented visceral depiction of the effects of war on both soldiers and civilians are meant to disturb the humanity in us and challenge our empathy. The film stirs the unconcerned to ponder over the politics and origins of a war that pulled the sheets of comfort out the window for the unspoiled youth. Shielded from existential threat during fragile moments of peace, viewers will find “Black Sunflowers” to be enthralling. Though the film captures only a tiny slice of the magnanimity of scale of modern conflict, it is far more effective in delivering truth than generally sanitized news and digitized journalism that control narratives.
“Pulling the bird back to swap battery,” is bringing the attack drone back safely and ensuring the replacement battery is fully charged. Over a week, almost 1300 explosives were dropped from the enemy side. It is a tit-for-tat relentless exchanges of drone strikes and retaliatory actions. One could only imagine the extent of damage and loss of young lives at the opposite side of the fence, an immense tragic waste just the same.
“What a pity for this good Russian,” says 22-year old Ukrainian bartender turned soldier Echo as he takes a video of the lifeless combatant left unclaimed in the field.
From a bunker, a drone is sent back in the air smoothly over black sunflowers of the battlefield. ####