WINNER—Grand Jury Prize, Best US Documentary, Sundance 2024; Best Documentary, SIFF 2024

Russia’s unconscionable war in Ukraine has forced the country’s artists to become soldiers. Slava and Anya split their time between making ceramic sculptures and training civilian fighters, while cameraman Andrey can no longer bring himself to paint as he shoots the devastation around him. While mired in the horrors of protecting life and land, these artists are compelled to locate beauty in the bloodshed. They make delicate creatures, porcelain owls, snails, painted with intricate patterns, which they place on the killing fields, and transform mechanical drones into vibrant dragonflies before launching them to drop bombs.

The winner of the US Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, Porcelain War delivers a visually stunning dispatch from the front lines of both a terrifying physical invasion and the soul’s battle to rise above destruction. Wrestling meaning from trauma, Slava explains: “Ukraine is like porcelain—easy to break but impossible to destroy.”