‘Timestamp’ review: Doc is a powerful, fractured portrait of school days in Ukraine

Dir/scr: Kateryna Gornostai. Ukraine/Luxembourg/Netherlands/France. 2024. 125mins

Watch any documentary about colleges, and you’ll nearly actually come away with a newfound respect for anybody who dedicates their life to educating. However the educators in Kateryna Gornostai’s observational movie about education in Ukraine in the course of the ongoing battle with Russia are in a unique league. Interrupted by air raids, dealing with broken and typically solely destroyed infrastructures, they share data and fervour, hugs when wanted and – most crucially – a way of normalcy and consistency.

A supremely assured work

The fragmented construction implies that we don’t observe anyone particular character’s journey in the course of the movie, which was shot over fourteen months in quite a few areas. However there’s appreciable cumulative energy to those intimate glimpses of children, from main college tiddlers to highschool graduates, all dealing with an unsure future.

Gornostai returns to the Berlinale with Timestamp – the one documentary to display in the principle competitors – having premiered her fiction function debut Cease-Zemlia in Technology 14+ in 2021, the place it received the Crystal Bear of the Youth Jury earlier than a wholesome competition run. Berlin juries have been significantly aware of documentaries of late, a number of of which – together with the final two Golden Bear winners Dahomey and On The Adamant – have handled themes of schooling, both overtly or tangentially. Whether or not Timestamp can observe of their footsteps stays to be seen, however that is a powerful and well timed image that ought to spark loads of curiosity amongst distributors and will determine in awards conversations going ahead.

It’s a supremely assured work from Gornostai which, though it does run a little bit lengthy, finds a satisfying rhythm in its patchwork construction. Her most profitable selections are her boldest: the selection to not embrace any interviews or speaking heads is one; one other is a placing, dissonant avant-garde acapella rating.

The director additionally took an method of energetic non-intervention within the making of the movie. It was scripted, in as a lot as she had concepts of scenes that she needed to indicate within the image, however nothing was recreated or staged. With out interviews or narration, it might nearly be a fly-on-the-wall perspective, however for the truth that the digital camera – and, by extension, Gornostai and her crew – continuously develop into characters or contributors within the movie. Kids lock eyes with the lens and wave, some clown for it, others regard it with suspicion. The digital camera – Gornostai selected to shoot on an Alexa moderately than one thing extra manoeuvrable and unobtrusive – was by no means going to fade into the background. However what shortly turns into clear is that kids are supremely adaptable, and might take these extremely unsettling and strange instances of their stride.

This can be a battle movie however, whereas we hear the battle past the body and see the aftermath, the battle itself is rarely proven. It’s, nevertheless, all over the place. The movie’s title comes from the protocol of making use of a tourniquet – one thing that’s now a part of the curriculum taught to each Ukrainian schoolchild. The battle has destroyed quite a few college buildings and displaced the scholars and employees. One instructor walks by means of her burnt-out kitchen to run a zoom class, on calculating the sq. of binomial, from her rubble-strewn backyard. A main college in Kharkiv has relocated to a disused tunnel in a subway station. A gaggle of very younger youngsters sing a tune containing the traces, “I hate you battle…I don’t wish to shoot anybody.”

College students nearer to commencement, in the meantime, are inspired to consider what function they might play within the army, ought to the necessity come up. And all through all of it, the teachings are punctuated by air raid sirens. Lessons file calmly to the basement shelters the place advert hoc classes or long-running teacher-student card recreation tournaments proceed. The older college students make an enormous, adolescent present of bravado, taking their time and dragging their heels whereas the lecturers try and hustle them to security. Which simply goes to indicate that youngsters are the identical the world over.