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Porcelain War Reviews
“Porcelain War” is a testament to how life’s beauty — all the world’s fertility an artist is trained to see — endures among privation and death.
| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 6, 2025
The film is often subtle about the art it represents, but that’s arguably one of its greatest, most poignant strengths.
| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 24, 2025
It's breathtaking.
| Jan 17, 2025
The war footage is quite extraordinary... The structure of the film is a bit ungainly, but under the circumstances it's easy to see why.
| Jan 17, 2025
By sticking to the more feel-good aspects—as feel-good as one can get, given the subject—and refusing to truly grapple with some of the more complex and troubling issues it hints at, it misses the chance to transform into something far more meaningful.
| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 3, 2025
Backed by a feral, driving score from Ukrainian folkloric quartet DakhaBrakha, “Porcelain War” makes the case for art as another protective weapon against imperialism.
| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 3, 2025
A sublime and stirring documentary from American filmmaker Brendan Bellomo and Ukrainian ceramicist Slava Leontyev about living, fighting and creating under siege.
| Dec 11, 2024
This film doesn’t flinch from violence, but it finds hope in a people’s patient refusal to surrender who they are.
| Dec 6, 2024
Its partisan zeal does permit it to drift into danger zones it doesn’t seem completely aware of. In the most part, though, it’s guided by love for the country’s sylvan landscapes and everything that flows out of them.
| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 3, 2024
As the filmmakers repeatedly tie an inspirational bow on art and beauty, the good intentions yield cold comfort.
| Nov 21, 2024
A combination of whimsy and devastation, it looked at the continuing war in Ukraine through the eyes of eccentric artists who carry on with their craft of making adorable little figures even as the Russian invasion disrupts everything.
| Feb 2, 2024
There’s a great deal of beauty in Porcelain War and there’s a potent artistry behind it, but I’ve never watched a documentary with so many running visual metaphors and so little faith that the audience will be able to grasp them.
| Jan 28, 2024
Suffused with the golden-hour nature of Kharkiv, the film also features music by Ukrainian force of sound DakhaBrakha which is not easily forgotten.
| Jan 21, 2024
While Sefanov may be too close to the material to ask these hard questions, his co-director Bellomo should have had the required distance to not just compile footage, but contemplate what it all means.
| Original Score: C | Jan 21, 2024
The intensity with which 'Porcelain War' presents its horrors will knock you down.
| Jan 20, 2024