DANYLIW RESEARCH SEMINAR ON CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE

How does an animated short film made from an oral history interview become a historical source? This paper examines the full production process of Ember (2026), a 12-minute animated documentary that transformed a refugee testimony into a work of visual history. Ember is based on an interview with an anonymized elderly Ukrainian woman who fled Russian-occupied territory with her husband in the early weeks of the 2022 full-scale invasion. The film was created without dialogue or subtitles, the narrative is carried entirely through animation and soundscape. It was a deliberate choice to prioritize accessibility and emotional immediacy over documentary convention.

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Ira Yeroshko is a PhD student at the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History at the University of Luxembourg.