Doc - There's No Place

Documentary Feature

Title: There's No Place

TRT: 90 min

Project Status: In Postproduction

Logline 

Daryna, a Ukrainian refugee in the U.S., ultimately decides she and her children must flee in the opposite direction despite the ongoing war, choosing community and emotional safety.

Synopsis

Told through quiet observational footage and home videos/performance breaks, There’s No Place explores how Ukrainians experience a rupture of time and space after the Russian full-scale invasion. In Ukraine, time manifests in a constant state of physical alert. In the quiet, peaceful U.S. environment, one is physically safe but emotionally on guard. One’s sense of time becomes fractured, fragmented and deeply uncertain through the experience of fleeing, leaving behind continuity and community for an ever-changing, unfamiliar, more individualistic landscape.

Daryna, 45, fled with her two children to a host home in Pittsburgh’s suburbs where they slept together in a guest room in one bed for a year and a half. Homesick, they get tickets back to Ukraine and choose to treat this 18-month trip as an extended vacation. Before leaving the U.S., the family dog-sits in an empty, spacious mansion in Hilton Head and changes their tickets after a massive bombing of a children’s hospital in Kyiv. They move to stay with friends in New Jersey. However, suffering from alienation, Daryna changes her mind again and ultimately chooses to return home to Kyiv. It is here that we realize what was so meaningful in Ukraine for the trio: family, friends, community, kindness, belonging.

Additional Project Information

In 2022, the Russian attack on my country turned my world upside down. I realized I needed the chance to respond to current events, execute production more quickly, and break my reliance on large institutional funding for narrative filmmaking. After 20+ years of narrative work, I chose documentary as the most fitting format for my first feature film. There’s No Place is a pivotal step in my artistic development. I’m grateful to the Tueshop for gentle peer support that helped me move more confidently in sharing a painful and complex experience through cinematic means.

I am opposed to multiplying the images of death and ruin that voyeuristic mainstream media has propagated about Ukraine since 2022. This approach removes Ukrainian agency and the strong resistance that keeps the country functioning. I believe we can portray the war by showing how Ukrainians preserve vibrant life, and why some leave behind the luxuries and safety of life abroad to return home.
I’m using a strictly observational approach and ideally will not use interviews or VO. My goal is to tell the story of Daryna’s family using visual elements and mixed archives that have to do with the family’s reality.

Half of There’s No Place was shot in the U.S. and half in Ukraine. Our long (20-minute) shots allow story details to unfold. Our camera style shifts with each country’s physical and social space.

The project received a NYSCA Grant, was a Sundance Collab finalist, and longlisted for Creative Capital.

Team

Producer/Writer/Director/Editor/Camera/Sound: Bohdana Smyrnova;
Consulting Producer: Harry Mavromichalis;
Producer/DP: Olga Wagner;
Cinematography in Ukraine: Liza Pyrozhkova, Sasha Lunina, Oleksandra Zborovska

Seeking

Financing in various forms: Donors, Investors, Producing Partners, Distribution, Online Distribution, In Kind Postproduction Services/Equimpent/Office, PR, Impact Producers

Contact

Bohdana Smyrnova

bohdana.smyrnova@gmail.com