Dad’s Lullaby. 2024. Ukraine/Romania/Croatia. Directed by Lesia Diak. US premiere. In Ukrainian; English subtitles. 78 min.
In her debut feature documentary, Lesia Diak observes 45-year-old Serihy Zinchuk, a Ukrainian soldier who returns from three harrowing years on the Eastern front to a fragile peace with his wife and young sons. In between moments of intimacy, tension, and loneliness, the filmmaker suddenly has the soldier turn the camera on her, and as she opens up about her own childhood experiences and her recent relationship with a war veteran, the emotional complexities of Dad’s Lullaby deepen further. “Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I have such deep empathy for male characters in my film—and for men in general,” Diak recalls, “because I witnessed it so closely, and it really broke my heart. When I witnessed similar experiences in the Zinchuk family, for instance why they are not more understanding of each other after this long separation, how they need to learn from scratch how to live their lives together again, it reminded me of many cases of separation, not least the case of my own family.”