Visions du Réel 2024: In Limbo (by Alina Maksimenko) | Review
In her first documentary feature, premiering at Visions du Réel 2024, Alina Maksimenko captures the first days of the Russian invasion and focuses on her family’s experience of solitude in the midst of war.
War comes with explosions, whether visible or audible—similarly, in Jonathan Glazer’s Cannes Grand Prix-winning film The Zone of Interest, he opted to convey the atrocities inside the camp through sound rather than sight. In this regard, the documentary titled In Limbo (W zawieszeniu) follows suit. While powerful and harrowing documentaries like 20 Days in Mariupol and Novorossiya delve into mass destruction, shockingly graphic scenes, and death amidst the Russo-Ukrainian War, Alina Maksimenko’s In Limbo, premiering at Visions du Réel 2024, presents itself as a film that allows for moments of silence amidst the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Although Alina Maksimenko sets a slow pace for most of the film, the first 5 minutes offer a gripping portrayal of the horrors of war through the eyes of a determined filmmaker, with her leg in a cast after surgery, attempting to flee the town with her cat to her parents’ house in a nearby village.
Alina’s mother, Tetina, used to work in a music school in Kyiv, but the war compelled her to leave the city and teach online music lessons. Her father, Tolya, a gruff but caring figure, looks after his 20 cats, including his neighbor’s pets who were intentionally abandoned by their owners when they fled. In this tranquil town blanketed in cold snow, the three of them opt to remain isolated, surrounded by the echoes of shelling from beyond the windows.
Not a single instance of destruction is depicted in Alina’s film. Instead of focusing on the war’s impact on the area, Alina directs her camera towards capturing the human connections among the three of them. As an aspiring filmmaker endeavoring to create her first feature, In Limbo also showcases the resilience of the filmmaking process amidst the direst circumstances. With her father also contributing to the direction of her film, suggesting what scenes Alina should capture, In Limbo finds a small, bittersweet reward amidst the nightmare they are enduring. However, with an uncertain future looming over them in their small cottage, as the war intensifies, tensions rise, and their relationships become strained, sometimes uncontrollably, with each family member becoming the director of their own life. This film offers a truthful portrayal of how war can alter human relationships. It also poses the question: what should one do when trials strip away all the good things they once had? Should they flee or remain in limbo?
Running at a length of 71 minutes, In Limbo marks Alina’s first feature-length documentary after directing the short film Ptitsa (31 min) in 2022. It was featured in the main International Competition at the 55th Visions du Réel and was produced by Poland’s Wajda Studio, with Filip Marczewski as the producer, Katarzyna Madaj-Kozłowska as the executive producer, and Justyna Han handling distribution.
