Student's winning film gives diary-style recount of Ukraine invasion
Polina Kozlova finds community at St. Thomas University after fleeing war
First-year journalism student Polina Kozlova surprised some of her classmates, professors and herself when a film she made about her experience during the Russian invasion of Ukraine won best picture at a shorts festival put on by St. Thomas University students.
"It was like a confession," said Kozlova, who usually doesn't talk much about her war experience.
In My Home, she describes what she saw, heard and felt when the invasion began. Her six-minute video-diary-style account is interspersed with scenes of tanks rolling in, bombed out apartment buildings and fiery projectiles falling from the sky.
Kozlova recorded it without a script. Some of the scenes were recorded in her home town by her friends, at personal risk should their phones have been searched.
"I was trying to make people feel how I was feeling in first days of war," she said in an interview.
"It's such a confusing feeling. You don't understand what's going on. … It's like watching your life slowly ruined. … You're just observing and trying to decide what to do next."
Kozlova describes herself as a happy 16-year-old before the war. She had good friends. She was experiencing her first teenage love.
On the first day of the invasion, she was at home in Kherson with her eight-year-old brother.
"I was trying to play board games with him, talk to him," and to ignore what was happening outside the window, she said.
Her mother was at the boarding school where she worked as a teacher. Her father was at his place of business.
She called them asking what to do. They told her to pack her bags.
Like many Ukrainians, Kozlova fled the country because of the war. She ended up going to Halifax with a friend of her parents, who thought it would be a better place for her to study in peace.
The rest of her family stayed in Ukraine. Her father couldn't leave because of mandatory military service rules. Her mother wouldn't leave without him.
The first years in Canada were difficult, stressful and unhappy, Kozlova said.
She had never dreamed of moving that far from home. She had been planning to go to university in Kharkiv to study languages. She was no longer sure what her future would look like.
She still thinks about what her life would be like if the war hadn't happened.
"I would still be happy, probably," she said.
It's starting to get better now.
Friendships in Canada help
She has enjoyed her first year at STU, where fees for the first two years of her four-year degree have been waived under a special program for students from conflict zones.
She has made many friends and she's feeling a bit more secure.
"It gives me time to breathe a little bit and actually plan what's going to be next," she said.
But she feels she had to become a completely different person.
"Everything that I knew before, everything that I was doing before — it's gone."
"I think I needed to grow up much earlier … and change some preferences in life."
Kozlova said she felt compelled to share her story because she believes people are starting to forget the war is still happening.
"I cannot just ignore it because my family is still there," she said.
"I want the people to know how I'm feeling about it, how it was for me.
"I still have a hope that it all will be over one day."
Kozlova went back to Ukraine last summer for a visit. People were out enjoying summer activities and meeting with friends, she said.
"They are trying to keep positive and trying to live their life. So that's what I'm also trying to do."
Audience moved
Her family now lives in Odesa, where it's relatively safe.
Kozlova speaks with them often, and they are supportive, she said. They've seen her film and showed it to her grandparents as well.
"Everyone was really touched," she said.
The reception was similar at STU's new film festival.
After a bit of stunned silence, Kozlova said, the audience reacted with tears and enthusiastic praise.
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