Just days after its Nov. 19 world premiere, “This Rain Will Never Stop” by Ukrainian director Alina Gorlova has won awards at two documentary film festivals, including the largest one.
The story it tells is full of trigger themes: Russia’s war against Ukraine, the civil war in Syria and the self-determination of Kurds. But instead of delving into the conflicts’ politics, the film offers a striking artistic perspective on what it means to live in a perpetual state between wars.
“A political documentary tries to persuade,” Gorlova told the Kyiv Post. “But I try not to judge anyone and explore the psychological attitudes of our society towards war.”
“This Rain Will Never Stop” first took the best feature documentary award in the international competition of the Festival dei Popoli in Florence, Italy on Nov. 23. Three days later, it won the best first appearance award at the largest International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Both events took place mostly online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Gorlova hopes that the film will premiere in Ukraine offline in a movie theater at Kyiv’s Docudays UA International Documentary Human Rights Film Festival in spring 2021.
The movie follows Andriy Suleiman, a young Kurdish-Ukrainian man who fled with his parents from the war in his native city of Al-Hasakah, Syria to his mother’s hometown of Lysychansk, Ukraine — only to find themselves in another war in the Donbas region. Although we never see the actual fighting, its echoes are ever-present.
First of all, the Suleiman family is divided by war. Andriy’s uncles are scattered around Eurasia: one is in Germany, another is in Iraqi Kurdistan and the last one remains in Syria. Andriy’s parents also want to come back, but the Syrian part of the family tells them not to make that mistake.
“A week ago, everything was very good. But for the past four days, there’s been gunfire again,” Andriy’s uncle in Syria tells them over Skype as if he’s talking about something as mundane as rain.
Having lived through two conflicts, Andriy himself chooses to become a Red Cross volunteer delivering humanitarian aid to Donbas residents. That’s how we first meet him: the camera picks him out of thousands affected by war who cross the Stanytsia Luhanska checkpoint.
“I wanted to see why he does that,” Gorlova says. “The impact of the war on a young man — this theme intrigued me.”
Nevertheless, Gorlova doesn’t uncover what motivates her protagonist. While he has the most expressive face, Andriy doesn’t talk much and doesn’t open up on camera.
Instead, he seems like a sailless boat carried by the alternating tides of war and peace. The film simply follows where they take him: from Ukraine’s frontlines to his brother’s wedding in Germany, then to Iraq for an emotional reunion with his uncle’s family. Twice he tries to get to Syria, but the war doesn’t let him, even to get to a loved one’s funeral.
Gorlova expands this theme of losing control with the many expressionistic methods in her black-and-white film. Through the refrain of aerial shots of barren masses of land — slag heaps of Donbas and sandy hills of Syria — she creates connections between the war-torn places. The stark electronic music and sound design intensify this atmosphere.
More allusions follow when Gorlova intersperses the film with the footage of mass celebrations — at a military parade in Ukraine and gay pride in Germany. Intended to contrast the personal tragedies of Andriy’s family, these scenes seem rather glib and out of place.
“I wanted to show that although we hate the consequences of war, people can feel elated when it begins,” Gorlova says.
As a result, through its attempt to show how the war changes one man, “This Rain Will Never Stop” demonstrates how it has affected his whole family and outlines its wider repercussions on humanity.
“I found that the war is a big part of our society and a thing around which everything revolves,” Gorlova says.
