THE STORY – In post-war Ukraine, a struggling filmmaker remains in his homeland while his wife and daughter start fresh in Vienna. Stuck between hope and uncertainty, he grapples with his choice to stay behind.
THE CAST – Valentyn Vasyanovych, Vladlen Odudenko, Misha Lubarsky, Sergii Stepanskyy, Volodymyr Yatsenko, Marianna Novikova, & Hryhoriy Naumov
THE TEAM – Valentyn Vasyanovych (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 105 Minutes
In Valentyn Vasyanovych’s “To the Victory!,” the audience finds themselves not on the front lines of battle, but in the quieter, more solemn aftermath. Set in a not-so-distant post-war Ukraine, the film forgoes the ruins and rubble typically associated with war dramas, choosing instead to explore the emotional and cultural wreckage left behind. This third and final chapter in Vasyanovych’s dystopian trilogy – following “Atlantis” and “Reflection” – is both intimate and conceptually cluttered. While it strives to be a meditation on family, identity, and fractured nationhood, it ultimately struggles beneath the weight of its own layered narrative – and the confusion it creates through its constant blurring of fiction and reality.
The premise is arresting: Ukraine has technically won the war, but the nation is far from whole. “The demographic tragedy in our country is growing every day,” a news report announces. Over 12 million Ukrainians are now living abroad, and many don’t plan to return. It’s a staggering statistic, and one that haunts the film’s protagonist, Valentyn (played by Vasyanovych himself), a once-celebrated director now trying to restart his creative life amid personal and national uncertainty. Living in Kyiv with his teenage son Yaryk (Hryhoriy Naumov), Valentyn clings to the fading ideals he fought for, even as his wife and daughter remain abroad, reluctant to return to a homeland still rebuilding itself politically, economically, and spiritually.
Where “To the Victory!” is at its strongest is in the quiet moments – a phone call between a husband and his wife, a father flying a kite while video-calling his daughter, or a visit to a war-scarred cemetery where there’s no room left to bury the dead. These sequences are laden with pathos and understated tension. Vasyanovych has a gift for atmosphere, and there’s a profound melancholy in his depiction of everyday survival after the war’s “end.”
Yet the film falters in its central concept: a “film within a film” structure that is introduced with such subtlety, it inadvertently breaks the viewer’s trust. The film opens with a father and son at the breakfast table in conversation, but the scene abruptly ends with the word “Cut!”, revealing it to be a scene from the fictional film Valentyn is making. This bait-and-switch would have been clever if used sparingly, but instead it repeats, blurring the lines between the “real” world and the filmed one so thoroughly that it becomes difficult and often frustrating to discern what is genuine and what is staged.
This confusion becomes especially problematic when it affects character continuity. For instance, Yaryk, in character, is initially said to be attending university, but later it’s revealed that the real Yaryk is doing nothing with his life. However, the university plot line comes up so frequently in scenes you think are “real” that it feels like the film itself is losing track. There’s often a question of whether what we’re seeing is Valentyn filming his movie or not. It’s a question that persists throughout, detracting from its emotional impact. While Vasyanovych may be aiming for a mockumentary style, with his character often addressing the camera and scenes that mimic documentary footage, the execution feels more muddled than meta.
At its heart, “To the Victory!” is a film about separation. Valentyn, caught between caring for his aging father and maintaining a strained connection with his distant wife and daughter, feels pulled in all directions. His conversations with his close friend Vlad (Vladen Odudenko) – another father whose family has chosen a new home – are some of the film’s most poignant, and other friends in the same boat debate whether they should have gone with their families or stayed to rebuild. These moments reveal the deep moral and emotional conflict faced by many Ukrainians, and serve as the film’s center.
However, these emotional truths are undercut by the film’s lack of structural clarity. The constant shift between the “real” and the “film within the film” diminishes the power of the more heartfelt moments. There’s a heartbreaking scene where Valentyn visits his mother’s grave with his father, who laments not buying a plot beside her, but is it real or part of the film he’s making? At a certain point, the viewer stops trying to untangle the layers, and the emotional stakes suffer.
Still, the film does offer moments of genuine connection, though they come late and fleetingly. A car ride near the film’s end between Valentyn and his son is the first time their relationship feels truly real, not performed. It’s a satisfying beat, but one that feels earned only after wading through too much narrative static.
In the end, “To the Victory!” is a film at war with itself: part-documentary, part-family drama, part-cinematic self-reflection. It wants to be a poetic statement about post-war Ukraine, about fractured families and fragile hopes. It succeeds, in part, through strong performances and an unflinching look at the emotional fallout of displacement. But it also stumbles over its own structure, losing clarity in its attempt to be both a film and a film about making a film.
And yet there is something powerful in the toast that gives the film its name. As Vasyanovych himself notes, “To the Victory!” is not just a declaration of triumph but a remembrance – a phrase passed down from his grandfather to mark the end of World War II. In this context, it becomes both a salute to survival and a question mark over what, exactly, has been won. It’s a bittersweet cheers – not to a clean victory, but to perseverance in the face of ambiguity, loss, and change.
