You are 35, happily married, and a first-time mom with a precious 5-year-old. What would it take for you, without training, to take up with a special forces assault division?
Enter Alisa Kovalenko, a Ukrainian. She is the director, cinematographer, and narrator of “My Dear Theo.” Her film is a love letter to her only child. She writes, “I’m so afraid of losing our connection. I keep asking myself – I should be questioning my choice. But then I would know I did not do everything I could.”
She films, beginning in 2022, while she is marching with her unit to the border to liberate the towns the Russians have taken. Her photography is like no other war account. The calm beauty of pastel spring fruit blossoms and the deep orange sunsets are punctuated with live ammunition, sometimes shells in the far distance, and sometimes so close she checks those close to her for life.
When Kovalenko was in film school, she created her first film about a soccer player. But when her country began its conflict with Russia, she began filming to document history. Her second film, “Alisa in Warland,” documented the front line of the conflict in the Donbas region in 2014.
While working on that project, Kovalenko was captured by Russian-backed forces and detained for four days of sexual victimization.
She vowed that if Ukraine became involved in a full-scale war with Russia, she would join the volunteer army. That happened. She did.
But it does not mean she is free from conflict about her decision, and she wants her son to know that. She writes:
- “I want to leave something important for you –
To send it to you in the future.
about me, about all of us.
What will remain in your heart if I am gone?
Will you understand me?
Will you forgive me?”
Kovalenko’s film plays more like a poem than a documentary. It is not going to teach us about Ukrainian tactics or show us battles. We aren’t going to learn why Russia has invaded or the backstory of Ukraine’s conflict. But it is does reveal Ukrainian courage and heart.
Towards the end, Kovalenko narrates to her son:
“Our last position is in the Glade of Death.
We stare at the same landscapes – waiting
We listen –
You become part of this landscape of beauty and death…”
Kovalenko’s emotional film is dedicated to the “memory of all the parents who sacrificed their lives to defend the future of their children.”
Credits
Director/Cinematogrpaher/Narrator: Alisa Kovalenko
Editor: Katarzyna Boniecka
Producer: Katarzyna Kuczyńska
Release: Sept. 12, 2025 (Calagary international film festival)
Website: https://camdeniff.eventive.org/films/my-dear-théo-6893b17471505b22a18f4a37
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