‘A Picture to Remember’ Review: A Scrapbook of Memories From a Ukraine Under Attack
variety.comDennis Harvey Film Critic War onscreen, whether fictive or documentary, is often a sort of highlight reel: the excitement and terror of battle, cities in flames, the devastated aftermath.
It’s infrequent that a film dedicate itself to the disorientation of civilian survival in a long-term war zone, when everyday life goes on to an extent despite a surreal atmosphere of constant threat, and the uncertainty of any future at all.
That largely interior state is what director Olga Chernykh seeks to capture in “A Picture to Remember,” which opened the 2023 International Documentary Film Festival.
Her family having already endured various erasures during the Russian Revolution, World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union, Chernykh catalogs the remaining evidence of their past as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine once again threatens to wipe the slate brutally “clean.” This arresting short feature, which mixes elements of film diary, experimentalism, reportage and archival assembly, stretches the documentary form in ways that are personal without being self-indulgent.
Read more on variety.com
