With the journalist Elisa Mignot, the Ukrainian sisters based in Kiev and Paris tell of the loneliness and complicity of a sister in the everyday life of the conflict.
In Kiev, in Sasha Kurovska’s apartment, in 2023, there is a mattress in the hallway. And two bags. The first contains everything necessary in case of evacuation; the second in the event of a nuclear attack. “What to do in case of bombings? Millions of Ukrainians have asked themselves this question. The ones who left And those who stayed, like me” and who have been falling asleep to the sound of rockets and sirens since February 24, 2022. Olga, his sister, lives in Paris: “I can’t shake that thought and the guilt of being safe.” Some days his relatives don’t give him any news – a simple one “All is well, all is well” from her mother – that’s why she uses social networks and the press to get information, submits petitions and pots. “I feel so helpless.” The solution: Keep a two-part war diary that is published weekly Mthe magazine of moons. “To tell each other their everyday lives”, writes in the foreword Elisa Mignot, journalist on the initiative of this project. The first meeting between her and Olga took place in April 2014, during the civil revolution on the Maidan. one interviewed; the other translates.
“I wish only death to this gnome who has plunged his own country into misery, who has killed thousands of Ukrainians, Chechens, Syrians, Georgians and even Russians!” And all this for what? To keep the whole world at bay with their gas mixed with the blood of all their victims. By singing, Olga breaks away from this everyday life. As a chorister, she refuses to give visibility to Russian culture – it’s a political decision. capital letters «poutine», “Russia” Autumn – politics too. Sasha turns her hideout – an underground car park – into a cinematheque. His neighbor plays the violin. And in Paris, during a visit to her sister, she finds out “the deformed faces and bodies, the bright and rugged colors of the landscapes” by Edvard Munch “Feelings so strong and tormented”. Between these canvases and this story there is an complicity, an intimacy with loneliness, fear and death.
