Butterfly Vision

Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechnyi’s debut feature is a sensitive, nuanced meditation on war and its effects on the psyche of individuals and nations.

Central to the success of Butterfly Vision, however, is Burkovska: she embodies Lilia with silent rage, her poise broken in fleeting moments, the steely facade dropped for mere seconds at a time.

If Nakonechnyi’s low-key film had come out a year ago, it would have been received as a respectable, serious work from a promising first-time director. In the context of mid-2022, it is heart-rending, yet not quite intense enough.

Though she might have turned the dial up, Burkovska conveys Lilya’s depression and anxiety, and finally her resilience, with a muted, powerful performance. This might be one to file away for the future, when the current conflict has ended.

It would be unfortunate if this contextual thicket were to obscure the merits of Butterfly Vision, which, while certainly not reinventing the war-is-hell wheel, is interesting to analyse in formal terms, especially in its sometimes effective, sometimes glib use of modern tech.

The film might aim to deliver an aesthetic and emotional jolt, but it is the mundane, interpersonal moments that linger.