Russia bombed the Dovzhenko Film Studio in Kyiv overnight, destroying Ukraine's largest costume archive, roughly 100,000 costumes and 3 million clothing items, built up over decades of Ukrainian filmmaking history. Gone.
This wasn't incidental. It's part of a pattern of strikes on Ukrainian cultural sites, alongside this week's hit on the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, that target memory and identity, not just infrastructure.
I hope the international film community responds loudly. And I'd add this: after four years of full-scale war, some Western festivals are quietly making room again for Russian films and "Russian perspectives." Whatever the intent, gestures toward neutrality in this context don't read as balance, they read as normalization.