Deadline magazine names Ukrainian film Porcelain War as one of the top ten documentaries of 2024

Deadline, an American publication, has released a list of the top ten documentaries of 2024 featuring the Ukrainian-American film Porcelain War.

The list can be found on the media website.

According to the list's author, one of the best nonfiction films of this year is Porcelain War, directed by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontiev.

The film tells the story of three artists from Kharkiv – Slava Leontiev, his wife Ania Stasenko, and their friend Andrii Stefanov.

"The documentary shows the forms that resistance can take: by day, Leontiev trains Ukrainian troops to repulse Russian invaders. But his spare moments he devotes to art – the porcelain figurines he makes with his wife, Ania Stasenko (Slava sculpts the owls, "dragonlets" and other animals, and Ania paints them in remarkable detail)," the material says.

The authors call the Porcelain War an "artistic triumph."

"The photography by Andrii Stefanov, a painter-turned-cinematographer and dear friend of Slava and Ania's; the animated sequences that bring Ania's decorative designs to life; the naturalistic music by Ukrainian folk quartet DakhaBrakha. Even the war footage surprises with disturbing intimacy: I've never seen POV shots like those in the documentary, showing the curiously graceful descent of a mini-bomb toward a Russian armored vehicle below," the author of the article writes.

The list also includes:

• Black Box Diaries by director Ito Shiori;
• Dahomey by director Mati Diop;
• Daughters by Natalie Ray and Angela Patton;
• The Last Journey by director Philip Hammar
• No Other Land by Yuval Abraham, Basil Adra, Rachel Sor, Hamdan Ballal;
• Queendom by director Agnia Galdanova;
• The Remarkable Life Of Ibelin by Benjamin Rea;
• Soundtrack To A Coup D'Etat by Johan Grimonprez;
• Sugarcane, directed by Emily Cassey and Julia Brave Noisette.

For reference:

As Rubryka previously reported, the Ukrainian documentary Porcelain War, directed by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontiev, has received two nominations for the prestigious Critics Choice Documentary Awards.