Crimea, 5 AM

Country, release date: Ukraine, 2028
Status: In development

Crimea, 5 AM is a feature-length documentary film about the lives of Crimean Tatar women under ongoing Russian occupation.

At the heart of the film are Crimean Tatar women: wives of political prisoners, journalists, human rights defenders, civic activists, and mothers. While the men are in penal colonies, pretrial detention centers, or under constant persecution, it is the women who keep life from falling apart completely. They raise children, support their families, document the repression, help other families, and try to preserve the sanctuary of home in a place where the very idea of a future is under threat.

A separate and central theme of the film is the children’s coming of age under occupation. This generation is growing up in a world where fear is the norm and freedom is an abstraction. From a young age, they learn to remain silent, delete messages, avoid saying anything unnecessary at school, and live with the constant absence of their father.

During the filming, there will also be rehearsals for a documentary performance featuring opinion leaders from territories not occupied by Russia. By communicating with our protagonists through phone calls and messages on messaging apps, they will try to understand and convey to us the reality of life in modern-day Crimea.