A Poem for Little People review – Ukraine’s war with Russia seen through eyes of emergency evacuation team

There is a scene in this Ukrainian documentary in which a woman gruffly shrugs off the offer of evacuation from her property on the frontline. Her son has put in the request to the volunteer humanitarian team ferrying civilians to safety in the east of the country. But she is caring for her brother, who is paralysed, the woman protests – and what about her German shepherd? As explosions boom terrifyingly close, a volunteer patiently explains that his team will carry her brother to the minivan – and don’t worry, bring the dog. Eventually, the woman agrees to leave, brusquely wiping away a tear.

Director Ivan Sautkin is a film-maker by trade and served as a volunteer on the evacuation team. A Poem for Little People is his one-man film; Sautkin is behind the camera, recording everything. These are no interviews, explainers or voiceovers (which admittedly makes it hard to follow at times). The leader of the volunteers is Anton, a cool head under the heaviest fire. The trauma is raw, the situations desperate – in one, volunteers drive an elderly woman out of harm’s way, but as they bump along cracked, potholed roads, they question if they are doing the right thing putting her through the agonising journey.

In the second strand of the film, Sautkin visits two women – friends and neighbours living in a block of flats in a town near the Russian border. As the invaders enter Ukraine, Zinaida, a neat woman in her 80s, spies through her net curtains, carefully writing down how many tanks roll in, feeding the information to the Ukrainian army. Upstairs, her friend Taisia writes poems lambasting the Russians. There are no little people here.