After the Russian invasion in February 2022, Ukrainian deputy minister Olha Stefanishyna embarked on the herculean challenge of steering her country’s pathway into the European Union. Shot over the course of two years, Viktor Nordenskiöld’s documentary portrait closely chronicles her race against time, as the war escalates.
Always on the move, Stefanishyna is often seen on trains or in the back of cars, as she and her staff attend seemingly endless meetings with EU officials and other world leaders. Working towards the deadline of 14 December, 2023, the date on which the European Council would decide on Ukraine’s accession, Stefanishyna is under immense pressure at home and abroad. Around the same time that a proposed bill concerning national minorities hits a snag in the Ukrainian parliament, politician Viktor Orbán, then the prime minister of Hungary, publicly voices his opposition to the enlargement of the EU.
Nordenskiöld depicts Stefanishyna’s commitment to the cause, not solely as a matter of duty, but a continuation of her political principles. She shared that, during the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Kyiv, she had stood side by side with the protesters asking for a closer alliance with the EU. Still, in essentialising Stefanishyna as a symbol of a nation’s resilience, Nordenskiöld’s approach lacks the curiosity and scepticism that are always needed in documentaries concerning politicians. For instance, when Stefanishyna discusses Ukrainian officials swept up by embezzlement charges, Nordenskiöld fails to probe her own involvement in a high-profile corruption case.
What the documentary does do well, however, is the dizzying labyrinth of diplomacy, and the agonising slowness at which change can happen. At a time when war can break out at a moment’s notice, peace seems to move at a much more glacial pace.
• The Eukrainian is at Bertha DocHouse, London from 1 May.
