WE'RE FINE

Director’s Statement

When I first started the project, I thought I was simply documenting an installation. But once I learned where the road signs came from, roads I had once traveled in Ukraine, now marked by war, the meaning shifted.

Behind each piece of metal were untold stories of loss, survival, and endurance.

As a Ukrainian filmmaker living abroad, I carry the same quiet grief that this artwork embodies: the need to say “I’m fine” while hiding scars underneath. Filming this project was my way of bridging that silence, offering an emotional lens on the war that isn’t about frontlines or statistics, but about resilience, grief, and the fragile connections that sustain us.

This is not just a film about building an artwork. It is about how strangers become family in pursuit of a shared truth, how art can speak when words fail, and how even in the harshest desert, reminders of home can take root.