Chronicle of a Summer (2022) – feature documentary film

How do you make a home when you’ve lost your home? What future can you have when your past has been stripped away? What is left when what was yours has been stolen or destroyed? To address these questions, the directors of Chronicle of a Summer (2022) provided training and equipment to a group of Afghan and Ukrainian university students who had taken refuge in different countries in Europe after the Taliban takeover in 2021 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Following a week together learning about filmmaking and each other, the student filmmakers were divided into teams and sent to seven cities in Europe and Turkey to record the stories of people like themselves who had fled violence and repression. What they brought back demonstrates something different than the usual cameraman/subject relationship at the heart of most documentary filmmaking. The candor and the mutual confidence one finds here reflects the relationship of young people sharing and confiding their stories and feelings with one another. And you see and hear as well the respect of young adults listening to elders who are both new and familiar to them and who they intuitively understand and honor in ways appropriate to their respective cultures. Throughout, one senses the bonds of people who recognize in each other both what they have lost and the humanity they refuse to give up. Chronicle of a Summer (2022) – Afghan and Ukrainian stories from Exile – a feature documentary film by David Edwards & Alžběta Kovandová-Bartoníčková