A House Made of Splinters

Special screening in collaboration with the Club ukrainien de Montréal

In his acclaimed debut feature The Distant Barking of Dogs, filmmaker Simon Lereng Wilmont took on a 10-year-old child’s perspective of the war in Donbass in 2017. Three years later, the war still raging in Ukraine—and now on a scale that is difficult to comprehend—he returned to the front to capture an equally urgent look at the children caught in the increasingly cruel conflict. At the time of filming, troops were just 20 kilometres away from a special halfway home in the town of Lysychansk. Here, social workers care for kids whose families no longer can. Gorgeous, patient camerawork respects the children’s vulnerability but expertly detects the unmistakable normalization of violence in their desperate play, temporary friendships and fragile family connections. Illuminating and heartbreaking, this masterful Sundance Directing Award–winner captures children, teachers and already broken souls who very well may no longer exist in a war that shows no mercy. (Hot Docs)

*RIDM 2022
*Nominated for the Best Documentary Film Academy Award (2023)