QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN

The room is lit by blue blues. A woman appears out of nowhere, admitting that she has spent the whole day “writing a play.” She talks of her intention to join an ashram (a spiritual hermitage in India), suggesting that it is common for people of a certain age to enter a monastery, or go to war. This opening segment perfectly encapsulates the dark and thoughtful flow that the rest of the film will take.

Much of the work revolves around Jana, a person damaged by the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She must reconcile her background – grief, battle, family – with the life she currently wishes to pursue. Then there’s Yaroslava, a cancer patient, crossing her own demons. Death surrounds the duo, but love, as it is meant to, supports the people in their attempt to create new lives for themselves.

In the world of the film, the subjects must shape their decisions against the battle raging in the backdrop. Yaroslava also searches for a meaning within the far reaches of her soul. Identity is a key theme to the documentary: everyone queries where they are going in life, and why they wish to journey there. “I’m wondering who I am,” a person chuckles, positing that they could be a “gopher” (a burrowing rodent). Everyone craves for a new form or character in order to elevate them from their current state.

This desire to re-shape themselves as another is noteworthy, not least because of the horrific backdrop, but there are visual moments of tremendous beauty in With My Open Lungs too. A shaky camera follows two women across a bridge, noting the architectural contrasts on its way. This film is shaped by materialism and nature, handcraft and holiness, peace and war. Rich with imagery, the undercurrents and emotional flourishes helps makes this an intellectual excursion as well as an emotive one.

Cleverly, director Yana Sad exhibits two shots cut together simultaneously: the first showcasing policemen in full bombardment gear, the latter an ocean gently flowing in and out. More so than any other edit in the film, Sad conveys the duality of agony and adulation in this sequence. Where there is hate, peace is sure to follow. And when anger filters into the air, love swiftly races it. Humans, like all animals, are capable of experiencing both sentiments in their integrity.

Jana and Yaroslava are profoundly relatable, a fragile duo deepening their connection to the world around them. By bringing their viewpoints to the camera, they invite the viewers into their personal journey. Intimacy fuels the genre of documentary, sparking an authenticity and truth that merits it a different reaction to many other moulds of cinema. Free from artifice and edifice, what With My Open Lungs holds are suppositions on the world, and how to survive it.

Sad is also an accomplished stylist, bringing forth all sorts of innovative camera angles to deliver the women in their point of transformation. At the end of the day, it’s the combination of aesthetics and thought that makes this film so noteworthy and neat to sit through. She signs the movie’s cinematography alongside Yaroslavia Kalesidis.

The people in this feature mirror the beautiful despair found in the Turkish family of Inpaintings (Ozan Yoleri, 2023), as both units are rocked by the arrival of terminal illness and societal change. But of these two features, With My Open Lungs deepens the sorrow because it is so indebted to the geography around the main characters: a place polluted by chaos and destruction. “You have to deal with existential issues,” one voice exclaims; “to do it about war or not”.

With My Open Lungs just premiered in the brand new Doc@PÖFF section of the 28th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.