“Songs of Slow Burning Earth” (2024) is Ukrainian woman director and writer Olha Zhurba’s second feature length documentary. This observational documentary starts on February 24, 2022 at the beginning of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine and ends an indeterminate time after August 1, 2023. The only measure is kilometers away from the frontline. These images are offered without narration but relate to the effect of the escalation of the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian War on the land and people.
With a runtime of ninety-five minutes, moviegoers may find “Songs of Slow Burning Earth” challenging to watch since it does not have a conventional narrative, but the collection of scenes contain a unified message: the Ukrainian people do not welcome Russians. It is a mostly abstract film that shows civilians, from children to the elderly, soldiers, alive and dead though the latter is not shown in graphic detail, and the landscape, from untouched to littered with the mechanical signs of clashing. The audio mostly has diegetic sounds, but there is a score and even the ordinary sounds get amplified to emphasize the sounds of war which can range from flies buzzing to an uncertain sound of either war or a machine used to examine people. There are interviews, but the interviewer is not included. These interviews are not shown in a conventional way because the audio does not often match what is happening on screen. The audio of calls to emergency services to report Russian activity is unimaginable and shows how spoiled other countries’ law enforcement is. Imagine getting calls about an invasion! The quotidian assumptions about rule of law and imbalance of fire power of law enforcement over perpetrators is turned on its head.
Without offering context or having narration, “Songs of Slow Burning Earth” would appear to allow its audience to decide for itself, but the images are curated to arrive at one conclusion: this is war, not liberation. When Russians are finally shown on screen, it is a reprise to an earlier scene showing Ukrainian high school students listening to thought provoking questions without binary answers. Critical thinking and individual thought are on display, but the Russian counterpart feels like the mechanization of human beings to exist for a single, mindless, automated purpose, i.e. fascism where they exist as tools, not people. The film is anti-Soviet propaganda, and not all propaganda is bad, especially nowadays with the official US federal government’s push to revise history, but who is the intended audience? It is not Americans because we do not watch documentaries in droves, and it is not approachable to anyone except art house lovers. So it could be made for Ukrainian people interested in seeing their experiences on the big screen, but also thought leaders from other countries expected to at least pretend that they can digest such content.
So what does war look like when the invaders are not on screen, and it is not portrayed in a conventional way by showing graphic violence, explosions and rolling vehicles? Depending on the proximity to the frontline, it is pictured as disruption and all-consuming mass gatherings. The sounds of chaos give way to the relative calm of mourning, quotidian activities and recollection of loss of routine and sudden physical violence. Some scenes are not obvious as Zhurba shoots from a driver’s point of view and shows people getting out of their cars then stopping to kneel at the side of the road. It is only later that she shows what the people are reacting to. If you have been following the war closely, you may already know the answer, but it is not instinctually obvious.
Zhurba offers a sense of continuity as she follows the journey of objects like the mass production of bread and its arrival for distribution to an investigation of a dead body. The longest sequence shows a group with a war crimes prosecutor exhuming corporeal remains from a grave that belongs to one person. Then a group of kids playing war describe how they witnessed the murder and its practical effect on them because of course, the death was not limited to a single person but is emblematic of a campaign that killed others. Then she shows where that body ends up and the bureaucratic process for reintegrating it into appropriate disposition of dead bodies in society, which means identification and reuniting it with loved ones. This portion of “Songs of Slow Burning Earth” is “Law & Order” if Frederick Wiseman did an extended episode.
Eventually “Songs of Slow Burning Earth” is a progression from death to life and relative stability, which got eradicated again after the completion of this movie and coincidentally on the same day that I watched it, March 8, 2025, which is a week after Presidon’t and Hillbilly Elegy bullied Zelensky and proved themselves to be boors. Better not to invite someone into your home than do that. Shameful and disgusting behavior. Injured soldiers are shown in a cheerful mood during physical therapy. On August 1, 2023, Zhurba shows the Soviet hammer and sickle being taken off the Motherland monument in Kyiv, but not the replacement with the Ukrainian trident, the coat of arms adopted in 1992 for an independent Ukraine. A subsequent shot which shows the same activity in the distance shows people enjoying a day in the sun next to water completely indifferent to the symbolism and historical moment, which earlier is described as important. It is not even important for ordinary people. The pivotal moment is leisure and enjoyment of peace, which is prioritized over official symbols of patriotism. Zhurba asserts that real national pride is in the ability to rest and enjoy a beautiful day.
“Songs of Slow Burning Earth” is about Ukrainian pride, resilience and defiance, but the goal is not state glory, but a return to life, not service to the remote concept of state. The seasonal shift from winter to summer also implies a rejuvenation and resurrection of spirit. It is not a happy ending because the image of Russian children marching and preparing for war suggests an enduring conflict that will be periodically renewed with each generation, but it is normalized as a part of life that can be survived like the seasons though not everyone will do so.
“Songs of Slow Burning Earth” is not for everyone. It checks all the boxes that most moviegoers despise. It is a documentary, abstract, subtitled. It contains depressing subject matter and is largely homogenous without showing all the civilian immigrants who resided in the Ukraine that the war also affected. Yet it may be the kind of movie that may reside in the memory in a more effective way than the actual experience of watching it for the collective effect of the fragments of so many people’s lives without churning them through a machine of sameness. It is the individuality retained in the collective that carries the most impact and distinguishes it from most movies about war. Also adorable puppies!
