Ukrainian director Yuliia Hontaruk's documentary *To Die to Live* has had its world premiere in the Special Screenings programme of the 60th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Unlike the many recent documentaries about Russia's war on Ukraine, the film takes a long-term view, following three Ukrainian volunteers across 12 years — from the frontlines of 2014, through an uneasy return to civilian life, and back into combat after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022.

The film, from Babylon 13 Production, follows three volunteers known as Shakhta, Dancer and Potter, who fought in eastern Ukraine from 2014 and continued to be haunted by their experiences as they tried to resume ordinary life. Hontaruk, the director of *Ten Seconds*, writes and directs, and shares cinematography credit with Denys Strashnyi and Yurii Gruzinov. In her director's statement she says the project shifted from being a portrait of conflict to a study of transformation and recovery, describing it as ultimately life-affirming — "not really a film about war" but about "what war leaves inside people, and what they do with it".