ABOUT

Following Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, ten Ukrainian soldiers and an army cook were taken captive by Russian forces, entering an over three-year ordeal of systematic starvation, beatings, and torture. They were returned to Ukraine through a prisoner exchange—survivors of an experience that defies comprehension. A POWER WITHIN: UKRAINIAN POWs REMEMBER bears witness to what they endured. In unsparing testimony, these soldiers speak about the conditions of their captivity, the nature of their treatment at Russian hands, and their unguarded feelings toward those who held them. Their accounts are difficult to hear—a deliberate and necessary discomfort. But the film is equally a validation of resilience. What sustained these soldiers through years of confinement and cruelty—their bonds to family, country, one another and life itself—emerges as the film's quiet and profound subject. They returned. They speak. They are capable of laughter—these are not incidental details. They are the measure of an extraordinary human courage.