Made before Russia’s full-scale invasion, this story of a hippy who turns warrior after his wife is killed could not be more urgent but feels oddly cliched

This war movie from Ukraine was made before the full-scale invasion in February, and tells the important story of how Moscow-backed separatists have been fighting in eastern Donbas since 2014. Director Marian Bushan co-wrote the script with schoolteacher-turned-soldier Mykola Voronin, apparently inspired by some of his actual experiences. Their story inevitably resonates, but I watched it with the slightly sinking feeling of witnessing raw truth being fictionalised into bland drama with all the war movie cliches in the book.

Ukrainian musician and actor Aldoshyn Pavlo is a soulful lead as Mykola, a shaggy-haired pacifist hippy who teaches high school maths and physics. Mykola has moved to depopulating and deindustrialising eastern Ukraine to live off-grid in a rickety shed with his pregnant wife Nastya...