Caring Slow Memory: War, the Everyday, and Ukrainian Women’s Documentary Film

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian documentaries have circulated internationally and won major awards. Yet, those focused on the female experience remain by and large invisible and little known both at home and abroad. They document a different experience of the war, centred on everyday existence that unfolds at a distance from the frontline. Everything Needs to Live (2024) and Flowers of Ukraine (2024) examined here show how care transforms the experience of the slow violence of the Soviet past and the early years of Ukrainian independence into caring slow memory, which is intensified and redirected onto a new set of relationships as a result of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The exploration of these narratives within the conceptual framework of slow violence and slow memory reveals a caring dimension to the concept of slow memory in the context of feminist ethics of care.