Memory review – a cinematic exorcism through a child’s eye view of terror in the Chechen wars

Vladlena Sandu’s extraordinary portrait of an upbringing during the 1990s Chechen wars blends surreal tableaux with flights of imagination to lament a collective loss of innocence Born in Feodosia, a Ukrainian city on the Crimean coast, Vladlena Sandu moved to her mother’s home town of Grozny in Chechnya when she was only six. Blue skies and cerulean waters dominated her childhood, but as the Chechen–Russian conflicts erupted into full-blown wars during the 1990s, she experienced terror, bloo...

By Phuong Le