To Die and to Live

Shaft, Potter, and Dancer were volunteers—ordinary Ukrainians who took up arms in 2014 when Russia’s war first struck their country. For nearly two years, filmmaker Yuliia Hontaruk followed them on the front lines. Then the guns fell silent, and an even harder journey began: the return home.

In the years that followed, the camera stayed close as these three men struggled to find their way back—to their families, to themselves, to a life that no longer quite fits them. Having already come to terms with their own mortality on the battlefield, they now face a much harder task: coming back to life. But slowly, painfully, something resembling peace begins to take shape. Then came the year 2022, and the full-scale Russian invasion called them back.

The film *To Die and to Live* captures twelve years of conflict and intimate observation. It is a portrait of an entire generation of Ukrainians—men who chose to fight and who spent ten years learning what it means to live.

Gentle, life-affirming, and quietly devastating—this film is not about war, but about what survives it.

It shows how war seeps into people and becomes a part of them, how one tries to come to terms with death, and how relentless the desire for life ultimately is.

You can purchase tickets online or in person before the event. The final ticket price includes a €0.50 handling fee, which is added to each ticket at the payment gateway or at the box office. This fee is non-refundable in the event of cancellation.