Ukrainian documentary Porcelain War wins DGA Award for Best Director in Documentary
Sebastian Stan, Slava Leontiev and Brendan Bellomo. Photo: DGA
The documentary "Porcelain War," an Oscar nominee for the 2025 awards, has been honored with the Directors Guild of America Award in the "Best Director in a Documentary" category.
The Directors Guild of America reports this on its website.
Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontiev, the film's directors, were awarded "Best Director in a Documentary."
Last year, the film "20 Days in Mariupol" by Mstyslav Chernov won in this category.
The movie tells the stories of Ukrainian ceramic artists Slava, Ania, and Andrii, who choose to stay and fight amidst the chaos of war instead of evacuating. They transform their creativity into a form of symbolic resistance. The trio remained in Kharkiv, which faced relentless rocket fire from the first day of the full-scale invasion.
Director Slava Leontiev is now defending Ukraine with weapons in hand.
The film shows what forms 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, "dragonets," and other animals, and Ania paints them in remarkable detail).
Photo: Screenshot from the film "Porcelain War"
The authors call the "Porcelain War" an "artistic triumph".
Andrii Stefanov, a painter-turned-cinematographer and close friend of Slava and Ania, captured the film's stunning visuals. Animated sequences brought Ania's decorative designs to life, and the Ukrainian folk quartet DakhaBrakha music enriched the film's naturalistic feel.
"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 American publication Deadline writes.
Filmmakers from the USA, Ukraine, and Australia worked on producing the film.
The film's world premiere took place at the Sundance Festival in 2024, where it received the Grand Prix of the US Documentary section.
As Rubryka previously reported, the Ukrainian documentary "Porcelain War," directed by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontiev, received two nominations for the prestigious Critics Choice Documentary Awards.
The Ukrainian film "Porcelain War" also made it into the 10 best documentaries of 2024.
2025 Directors Guild of America Award Winners:
- Best Director of a Feature Film – Sean Baker, "Anora"
- Best New Director of a Feature Film – RaMell Ross, "The Nickel Boys"
- Best Director of a Drama Series – Frederick Toy, "Shogun"
- Best Director of a Comedy Series – Lucia Aniello, "The Tricksters"
- Best Director of a TV Movie or Limited Series – Steven Zellian, "Ripley"
- Best Director of a Documentary Feature – Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontiev
The award in the "Best Director of a Feature Film" category went to Sean Baker, director of the film "Anora," about the romance between the son of a Russian oligarch and a stripper, the daughter of immigrants. In his movie, Baker portrayed Russian actor Yuri Borisov, who supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine and has starred in propaganda films.
For reference:
The Directors Guild of America Award is an annual American award for outstanding achievements in film and television directing.
The award was founded in 1948 by the president of the Directors Guild of America, George Marshall.
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