Glückliche Fälle

Conversations and encounters are the material with which Yevgenia Belorusets captures the image of a country in the grip of war, using a haunting language and a photographic eye, where the resilient daily routine descends into grotesque. They are named Swetlana, Lena, or Xenia. They work in nail salons, chat in cafés, or prepare for revolution. The lives of Belorusets' Ukrainian protagonists unfold as usual, both in cities and in the countryside. Rarely, and only in vague glimpses, do they push into the outer corners of the everyday-filled field of vision – the citizen militias, the soldiers, the blood. The reality of the war smoldering in Eastern Ukraine for years seeps slowly but steadily into the lives of the people, which Belorusets shares with us in partly hyper-realistically detailed, partly dreamlike, and often absurd scenes. Thus, a panorama of a society that has accepted the state of emergency as normality unfolds. "An astonishing masterpiece, written in a contemporary, highly intelligent language that resurrects the tradition of Gogol and Kharms to describe what life is like for women in Ukraine today." - Eugene Ostashevsky.