The famous American director Yevhen Afineevsky, the author of the Oscar-nominated film about the Revolution of Dignity “Winter on Fire”, visited the UNBROKEN National Rehabilitation Center. He is currently filming his third documentary about Ukraine in Lviv. This time, it’s about children injured during a full-scale invasion.

The heroes of the director’s new film, among others, will be the young patients of our Center who barely survived the enemy attacks and will bear the marks of Russian aggression on their bodies for the rest of their lives. This is 12-year-old Yana Stepanenko, who lost her legs during a rocket attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk. 8-year-old Romchyk Oleksiv, who suffered burns to 45% of his body during a massive terrorist attack on Vinnytsia. 13-year-old Stas Lyakh, who suffered a severe brain injury while sleeping peacefully in his home in the Kharkiv region. And also the Yankovsky brothers, 15-year-old Volodya and 9-year-old Yakov, from Odeschyna, and 11-year-old Veronichka from Vugledar. The last three children were buried under rubble and orphaned as a result of Russian attacks.

The American director wants to tell the stories of these little Ukrainians to the whole world, so that no one forgets: the war continues, the number of its victims increases every day, and children die and suffer at the hands of the aggressor.

The armed aggression of the enemy leaves its deep traces on the mental health of young Ukrainians. They talked about psychological help for children with the specialists of the Center for Mental Health.

It will be recalled that Yevhen Afineevsky’s film “Winter on Fire” was nominated for an Oscar in 2016 in the category “Best Documentary Feature Film”. The director’s second work about Ukraine, “Freedom in Fire”, was released in 2022 and is dedicated to the terrible events that our citizens have to go through due to Russian aggression. The third tape will be a continuation of the previous two, but with a focus on children who suffer from war. The director plans to release it at the end of spring 2024.

We sincerely thank Yevhen Afineevskyi and his team for supporting and standing by Ukraine and Ukrainians all these years