Before war broke out between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, Earle Mack, the former U.S. ambassador to Finland, uncovered a haunting chapter of his family’s history. His great-grandfather was killed in a pogrom in western Ukraine in 1893, and when the murderer was caught, it fell to Mack’s great-grandmother to decide his fate.
“If they caught the assassin, they would bring him to the closest relative,” Mack says. “And the closest relative, my great-grandmother, was the only one who could spare his life. She decided to let him live.”
Her courage inspired him, and since Putin’s invasion, Mack has made four trips to Ukraine to deliver aid—generators, clothes, food—to the war front. On his last stay, a 10-year-old girl stopped him and took his hand. “Will you take me back home?” she asked. He was tempted, but American immigration law made it logistically impossible. “I cried on the plane home,” he says.
Instead, he sought to capture her resilience on-screen, for all the world to see. Friends connected him with a team on the ground in Ukraine—cinematographers Andryi Kalashnikov and David Davidyan, field producer Volodymyr Sobotovskyi, and child psychologist Uliya Kalashnikova. Together, they interviewed 50 children across the country about their experiences of war. What emerged was what Mack had sensed all along: “They believe in death or freedom.”
The result is “Once upon a Time in Ukraine,” a 32-minute documentary directed by Betsy West. Throughout the film, extraordinary humanity shines within war-torn areas.
Ivanna, 11, showcases her elaborately drawn picture book, created in a cellar as bombs fell overhead. “In Ukraine, people believe in God and our armed forces,” she says. In her book, strawberries, watermelons, and apples take human form as Ukraine’s magical defenders. There is also Ruslan, a boy who fishes in a pond created by a bomb, and Myroslava, a girl who refuses to believe her father, who was killed in combat last May, is gone. “He will come back,” she says, shedding a single tear. “He’s alive.”
The film manages to stay hopeful despite all this—a flock of schoolchildren is pictured running through a bombed-out street in school uniforms, squealing and laughing—but closes on a decidedly somber note, with a procession of miniature coffins belonging to six children killed in an apartment-building bombing. “That brought home the tragedy of the kids who haven’t survived,” West tells me. “But the film is really about those who still are [alive].”
In November, “Once upon a Time in Ukraine” won the Critics Choice Award. The actor Liev Schreiber has since signed on as an executive producer, and the film is currently short-listed for an Academy Award in the Documentary Short Film category. The nominees will be announced January 17, three days before the presidential inauguration. The timing is significant—the Trump administration may well put Ukraine on even more unstable ground. “This film shows what’s at stake,” West says.
Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at Air Mail
