Currently, screenings of the film "20 Days in Mariupol" are taking place in Ukrainian cinemas. Mstyslav Chernov's documentary tells about the beginning of a full-scale war in Mariupol. Important video evidence of atrocities committed by the military of the Russian Federation.
However, there is one more documentary video fact. The author of the work is a 17-year-old boy from Mariupol. Vladyslav Piatin-Ponomarenko filmed his own video diary of the war. Filmed all 55 days during which his family lived in the basement of a high-rise building. The boy not only managed to document all the horrors of the destruction of the city and its inhabitants, but also smuggled a flash drive with a video and a Ukrainian flag through a filtration camp to Russia, and from there to Ireland.
Terrible footage: charred houses destroyed "by Russian shells"; graves of neighbors on playgrounds in the yard; mother cooking on the fire near the elevator; little brother, who for the first time in 25 days comes out of the basement to the street, where artillery weapons work loudly.
Before the war, Vladyslav's family lived an ordinary life. Mom worked at the Mariupol Construction Vocational College, dad worked at the Mariupol Metallurgical Plant named after Illich, Vlad was a student, and his nine-year-old brother studied at school. Vlad performed in the youth amateur branch of the Mariupol Drama Theater called "Teatromania". Theater for a boy is love and a favorite hobby.
A week before the war, the whole family fell ill with the coronavirus. A 73-year-old grandmother was hospitalized in serious condition. Both mother and father were ill. Since February 24, the city was under siege. It was not possible to physically get to the hospital to pick up my grandmother. The family slept in the basement of their high-rise building. They cooked like everyone else – outside, and during heavy shelling – on the stairs near the elevator. They lived without electricity, water, heat, gas. And Vlad, together with his father, started filming everything he saw in the besieged Mariupol from the first day of the full-scale invasion.
"I saw how Russian shells hit the houses. These houses burned and fell like dominoes. I saw a phosphorus bomb hit my grandmother's house. I shot small fragments of video, so I had a diary format. I filmed various things, such as shelling, who and where they got food, where they got water, who died and where. I believed until the last moment that Mariupol would survive and we would wake up again in a Ukrainian city without war," says Vladyslav.
One day, mother and son rushed to the hospital. It was a dangerous path. But what they saw in the hospital itself is still in front of the boy's eyes. "People's corpses were piled up to the width of the second floor"... The hospital was partly cut by debris from the landings. Then Vlad and his mother decided that the grandmother had died.
On the way home, mother and son passed an educational institution where a woman taught and Vlad studied. Then the occupiers and collaborators tore down Ukrainian flags from buildings in the city. Vlad saw how the former director of the college tore the flag from the flagpole and threw it on the asphalt. The boy raised a blue and yellow flag. Since then, he always keeps it with him.
"I remember how I took my brother from the basement upstairs to the apartment so that he could go to the toilet. And then heavy shelling began. I covered him with myself near the elevator. And a rocket hit the nearby entrance. When we got back to the basement, my mother was crying because she thought we were dead."
On March 7, a shell hit Vlad's house. Since then, they lived in the basement of the store, and sometimes came to the apartment during the day.
The family stayed in Mariupol until May in complete hell, without any possibility of evacuating. Parents were looking for products. They went to the well for water. From April 2, the occupiers obliged the locals to wear white armbands. Like, this mark separated civilians from the Ukrainian military. Every step on the street was a real danger. In Vladyslav's film, there are shots where the father walks between the charred houses to the well, his hand wrapped in a white cloth.
And then the boy's mother accidentally received information that the grandmother (the woman's mother) is alive and some acquaintances took her to Russia, where she is staying with her former classmates.
Grandma is alive, but in a very bad condition. Then the family made a difficult decision to leave Mariupol for Russia. It was very difficult for the authorities to agree to this. The guy clearly decided that after going to Russia first, he would go further to Europe.
Then there was a filtration camp and interrogations. Vlad took a risk because he had a flash drive with videos and a Ukrainian flag with him. He hid the flash drive in his pants, put the flag at the bottom of one of the bags. Either because the boy was only 17, or because they were going to Russia, to visit relatives, Vlad was lucky and his secret luggage was not declassified.
Vlad saw his grandmother and hugged her. The grandmother told about several terrible weeks at the beginning of the war, when she was lying in the hospital on an oxygen machine. And then the hospital began to be shelled. Patients suffering from the coronavirus sat in the cold, for days they practically did not eat.
"It is not known where she got the strength to somehow cheer up her neighbors. They told her: "Lyudmyla, tell us something," and she told stories from her life. Someone played the guitar, someone cried when there was heavy shelling. She sat silently, mentally praying. Grandma miraculously survived, like all of us. Like every Mariupol resident who stayed in Mariupol."
The first evening, sitting in the circle of his grandmother's classmates, the boy listened to various stories. And about the "liberators", and about the fact that he is a "Nazi"... Vlad and his father set out on the road. My mother and my younger brother stayed in Russia. After all, my mother has to take care of her parents, because they are both very old and sick.
"My mother's position is pro-Ukrainian, it was and still is, and it is difficult to live with it there. There is discrimination. This is a forced stay, because if she leaves the grandmother alone and the bedridden grandfather, she will not forgive herself for it. It is very difficult for us to contact my mother now. Both me and dad are very worried about mom and brother. And we hope that the time will come and we will be together again."
Vladyslav has been in Ireland for over a year. He does not miss a single rally for Ukraine. In the summer, he worked in a coffee shop. He is currently continuing his studies online at the Mariupol Construction Technical College, which is currently located on the basis of the Khmelnytskyi Polytechnic College of the Lviv Polytechnic National University. He is also studying at a college in Dublin. In addition, he teaches acting to Ukrainian and Lithuanian children. Vladyslav also writes poems, works on the script for the next film about teenage problems in forced migration. He aspires to enter the New York Film Academy and become a director.
Vladyslav really wants his documentary "war diary", filmed over 55 days in occupied Mariupol, to be shown on the BBC: "I want the world to hear and see what Ukrainians experienced, what I, an ordinary teenager, managed to film. I dream of Victory. I want every Russian criminal to be punished. I dream of going to our beach on the Sea of Azov again, meeting friends near the drama theater. I am waiting for the moment when I can return to the Ukrainian Mariupol and hang the flag that I managed to save in February 2022 on the building of my college," says a brave Ukrainian boy from Mariupol.