Get the latest gossip
‘Timestamp’ Review: A Beautifully Observed Ukrainian Doc on the Perils and Pleasures of Schooltime in Wartime
Kateryna Gornostai follows her lauded narrative debut 'Stop-Zemlia' with 'Timestamp,' a compassionate, keen-eyed move into non-fiction.
Using no narration, talking heads or any other form of commentary across the doc’s 125 minutes, the filmmaker instead plants her camera in a range of elementary and high school classrooms across the country — onscreen titles indicate where and how far from the frontlines of conflict they are — to observe the old educational routines that persist in wartime, and the new ones that swiftly become unremarkable. Shooting took place between March 2023 and June 2024, and while Gornostai and editor Nikon Romanchenko don’t impose a rigidly dated timeline on proceedings, the film roughly follows the arc of a school year — culminating in the end-of-an-era rush of graduation, here an especially conflicted milestone of anxiety and promise. Those harsh, swelling wails of warning become the film’s punctuating sonic motif — in stark contrast to the buoyant, babbling vocal interjections of Alexey Shmurak’s unexpected a cappella score, a literal chorus of humanity amid the chaos.
Or read this on Variety