Not a single image of warfare can be found in Ukranian director Kateryna Gornostai’s Timestamp, but the irrevocable effect of Russia’s unjustified invasion of her country is felt in every expression and utterance, in the overwhelming destruction left behind. Shot between March 2023 and June 2024, this upsetting documentary observes the life-altering transformation of school-going for children, teenagers, and teachers in various parts of Ukraine. Cities are introduced based on how far they are from the frontlines of the war, with notations for those that have been completely demolished. Never focusing on one community too long, the cumulative effect is a patchwork of pain, perseverance, and adaptability as young innocence is forever lost, another rallying cry condemning the cruel futility of Putin’s maniacal warpath.
As America’s education system comes under threat of a newly instated government testing the waters of authoritarian rule, Timestamp is an important reminder that education is even more vital during times of conflict. Math, science, and language lessons must now make room for exercises in which children identify perils surrounding their everyday lives. A picture of a teddy bear is shown to cheers, then a picture of a teddy bear with a rocket attached as the children correctly identify danger. It’s the kind of lesson no child should ever have to experience, and much of Gornostai’s point is to show how quickly seemingly shocking routines can be normalized. When schools are bombed out or under constant threats of air raids, the resilient teaching staff set up schools in underground subway systems or convert to virtual lessons, conveying the importance of education as not just edification of the mind but also a place of familiarity and comfort.
Timestamp‘s most unshakable moments find Gornostai zeroing in on the very personal impact of such overwhelming, incomprehensible change on a young mind. As classmates partake in a dance––serving as a celebration that life moves on, remembrance of those fighting in the ongoing war, or just a few minutes of distraction from everyday threats to their existence––the camera is trained on the sullen eyes of one depressed girl who doesn’t want to move a muscle, her brain seemingly unable to grasp a sense of trauma with no end in sight. As much as the daily moments of silence, breathing exercises, and hugs the teaching staff carry out, Timestamp is deeply upsetting in showing how psychological scars will never be undone.
As the documentary expands to feature high schoolers, the horrors of a lost innocence become a sobering reality, those graduating without the luxury of wondering what college they will attend or what studies they will pursue. Through early military training and survival scouting expeditions, they are learning how to operate rifles, find pulses, and apply tourniquets. Capturing a bit of humorously caustic irony how this age group should never have to go through this experience, one teen’s nicely polished fingernails get in the way of her trying to properly disassemble a firearm. Others find experience in building drones, the resulting use of which on the battlefields can be glimpsed to vital effect in such recent documentaries as Porcelain War and 2000 Meters to Andriivka. A generation is being raised to willfully fight a war so their children won’t have to.
The film’s mosaic approach is sometimes distancing, jumping to another story just as we’ve grown comfortable with another. One imagines feature documentaries could be made about any number of the communities Gornostai captures here, and by capturing just a glimpse into each some sense of repetition starts to materialize. But then maybe that’s the point of Timestamp: every community across the country is being forced to readjust every routine they have to partake in a war effort that no one wants to be in. However, as a speaker at a high school graduation notes, “life doesn’t stop,” and Gornostai’s documentary is a powerful reminder that even under the worst of circumstances, humanity will always find a way to endure.
Timestamp premiered at the 2025 Berlinale.