‘P lease go to the shelter NOW!” The text message from our lovely guide comes through at about 1am. She knows I have ignored the countless air-raid warnings that have previously popped up on my phone, but this one, she says, is a missile, not a drone or a jet. So I go to the car park beneath my hotel and am greeted by a sardonic round of applause.
It is midway through the Odesa international film festival and I am one of five judges in the “national” section. The other four judges are women – Wanda from the Czech Republic, Sahraa from Afghanistan, Lisa Marie from the UK and Alisa, who is Ukrainian. There are nine films to watch, a mixture of documentary and drama.
At the end, we can award two cash prizes. The festival has to contend with daunting problems, and its director, Anna Machukh, has successfully moved the entire thing from Odesa to the relatively safer Kyiv – and dealt with the constant electricity shutdowns. Many sections of Kyiv are down to a few hours a day and the city soundscape is massed generator noise.
With one exception, the films are all set within the context of the war with Russia. I have never been to a festival like this, in which the films are so utterly linked to the present: tense, time and place. As one film finishes, there is a missile alert and we all scurry to the nearest underground station, where escalators ferry us deep below ground and barriers open automatically, no ticket needed.
As we descend, I find myself in conversation with.