_{Three Windows on South West by Mariia Ponomarova}

The war in Ukraine rumbles on. New catastrophes keep on occurring, for instance the recent destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam. However, in Mariia Ponomarova’s documentary short Three Windows On South West, the invasion itself is not placed at the forefront. Instead, the Ukrainian director (mainly based in the Netherlands since the summer of 2014), focuses on an image showing three windows of her old family apartment in Kyiv. As we see three of its windows, we hear the director’s mother, friends and former lover reminiscing about such matters as romantic trysts on the roof, watching movies and having sleepovers.

The film (a world premiere in the Shorts: Resist programme at Sheffield DocFest) has an extra poignancy because of what it doesn’t mention. The director talks about the “memory tableaux” she is preserving in the film.

“Also, I am trying not to make it very grim. I feel that a lot of numbness comes from the general audience even when the film is not connected with war,” she says of how she tries to reframe subjects covered in the news cycle.

“It is important in all this anger and sadness to hold your valuable things next to you - and to hold your close ones next to you,” Ponomarova explains the deeply personal focus of her documentary. She first had the idea of making it shortly after Sheffield Doc Fest last year. She had been participating in the Meet Market and had gone back to Amsterdam when she discovered a “certain image that I just couldn’t pass by.” She won’t say what this image was but it stuck with her.

“It was necessary for me to do something quite quickly because it was important and dear to me. It is quite a personal story and I had to externalise it.”

She self-funded the project and produced it herself. It rekindles memories of a period in her life when she was young and happy. She talks about watching music videos of early Adele songs and old Coen brothers movies; about spending time with family and friends.

Not that everything was perfect. “We briefly mention it in the film. The only scary part of that building was that we, for the longest time, had an elevator that wasn’t actually working well. It was producing horrific sounds when it was closing…”

Ponomarova moved to the Netherlands nine years ago to study at the Dutch Film Academy. Last year, in February 2022, at the time of the Russian invasion of her homeland, she was in Amsterdam. “I need to acknowledge my privilege that all this time I was not going to bomb shelters like many of my compatriots,” she says. Nonetheless, the psychic trauma was obvious. The city where she had grown up was under attack. “I’ve seen a gazillion accounts of my friends saying ‘oh my god, I had my first date here,’ or ‘this was my kindergarten,’” she observes of how familiar landmarks in the lives of her contemporaries were now under threat of destruction.

Speaking with gentle irony, the director cites a line from Dutch-based Bosnian filmmaker Ena Sendijarević’s Take Me Somewhere Nice* (2019) to sum up her feelings about the Netherlands. In the film, a character is asked about the country and replies: “cold weather, cold people.”

“Of course, it’s a rainy country and of course it’s different to where I come from but I am also grateful to them [the Dutch]. Amsterdam as a city is extremely multi-cultural,” she continues. She is impressed by how the country tries to deal with its colonial past. There is an acknowledgement of previous misdeeds and an attempt to “see things from different perspectives.” She marvels at the country’s cultural life and the number of cinemas in the country. Her nearest one is “only five minutes by bike” from where she lives.

Ponomarova is also “grateful” for the “great helping hand” that the Netherlands Film Fund has given her new feature documentary Nice Ladies, about a team of senior cheerleaders from Eastern Ukraine trying to win against younger competitors. The film, which she started working on in late 2019, is now in post-production.

As she finishes that film, the director will be in Sheffield for the world premiere of Three Windows On South West. The doc has already been invited to several other festivals including Ischia and HER Docs.

The prolific Ponomarova (whose other credits as director, writer and creative producer include such titles as Fragile Memory, The Diaper Cake and Good Boy*) is now looking to her next project as director, the short experimental documentary Patronymic which was pitched at Dok Leipzig’s Short and Sweet event last year and has just received development support from the Netherlands Film Fund.
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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund