Episode Eight: Listen to the Children

The plight of Ukrainian children is the subject of Children in the Fire, a soul-stirring documentary feature from the celebrated filmmaker behind the Academy Award-nominated Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom. Children in the Fire highlights the ways in which Putin and the terrorist state are intentionally targeting Ukraine’s children. What makes Children in the Fire truly remarkable is that the stories are told by Ukrainian children themselves. Its main narrator is 17-year-old Valeriia, who says she started to keep a diary so that it could be used as evidence in future war crime tribunals. From Mariupol to Nova Kahkovka, from Odesa to Lviv, the film introduces us to children who have endured terrible indignities but who are, somehow, triumphant. Children in the Fire asks us all to bear witness, and to redouble our efforts – whatever those might be – to ensure that all Ukrainian children have the opportunity to live free, safe, and fulfilling lives. Children in the Fire will screen all over the world as part of four-year anniversary observances, including in Vancouver, in a special screening that we’re organising with our friends at the Ukrainian Student Union at the University of British Columbia. In this special episode, Children in the Fire filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky joins Sabrina to discuss Putin’s war on Ukrainian children.