The human meat grinder is at work, what use are prayers? - father Tolya asks his wife and daugh­ter. The three of them remain in their house in a large­ly desert­ed vil­lage north of Kyiv. War has broken out and the front is not far away, the noise of explo­sions is get­ting closer and closer. Should they evac­u­ate, too? Fears, ques­tions and dis­cus­sions dom­i­nate every­day life, loud words are spoken when the father once again despairs under the burden of respon­si­bil­i­ty. Ulti­mate­ly, togeth­er­ness and caring win out among the family - even for the dozens of cats and dogs that flee­ing neigh­bours have left behind in the village.

The artist and film­mak­er Alina Mak­si­menko doc­u­ments her own (sur­vival) life. She trans­lates her own con­di­tion into con­ge­nial cam­er­a­work that elic­its per­spec­tives that speak for them­selves from the cramped film­ing loca­tion of the family kitchen. IN LIMBO hardly shows the war at all and yet cap­tures it in its essence and in its con­se­quences for every crea­ture it threatens.

IN LIMBO was nom­i­nat­ed for the Euro­pean Film Award.

Alina Mak­si­menko born 1974 in Kiev, is a painter, direc­tor and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er. She stud­ied fine arts at the Boy­chuk Art Col­lege, Kiev. Not only in Ukraine have her works been exhib­it­ed exten­sive­ly and have been includ­ed in the col­lec­tions of Kiev muse­ums. In 2014, she showed her first video instal­la­tion and stud­ied doc­u­men­tary film and camera at the Wajda School, among others. In 2022, she real­ized PTITSA, anoth­er auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal short film made during the pandemic.

Her art­work is vis­i­ble at https://www.saatchiart.com/en-de/account/artworks/28503.