Ukrainian director Lesia Diak interview: ‘We’re all on trial; war testing our humanity’

Dad’s Lullaby follows Serhiy, a war veteran struggling to reconnect with his wife, Nadiia, and their three young sons; Sasha (11), Artem (8) and Nikita (3). The scars of war leave him emotionally distant. While he is haunted by memories too painful to name, his family is caught in the crossfire of his silence and rage. It’s interspersed with a dialogue between Diak and her subject as Serhiy turns the camera on the filmmaker herself. What unfolds is a profound conversation about love, trauma, and the fragile ways people try to heal — both together and apart.

In this interview to The Federal, Diak talks about how her romantic relationship with a soldier inspired the documentary, how trauma remains invisible, how Russia-Ukraine war is testing the humanity of Ukrainians, why it’s impossible to make peace with Vladimir Putin, and why Ukrainian writers and artists can’t stop telling the stories because they feel it’s their moral responsibility. Excerpts:

Let’s talk a little bit about what led you to make Dad’s Lullaby.

I had a personal experience of being in a romantic relationship with a soldier. After he returned from the war, I began to observe changes in how he interacted emotionally. He wasn’t able to be fully present. Everything — words, silences — seemed to trigger him. I didn’t know how to support him or navigate those moments, even though I deeply loved him. At some point, he decided to be on his own, and I realised this is a common fate for many war veterans who find it hard to connect with their partners after returning home.

That personal loss was my motivation to start working on Dad’s Lullaby. I found a family with the help of a Ukrainian NGO that works with veterans and their families. They allowed me to closely observe their pain and, in turn, offered me their support. The process was twofold: while documenting their trauma — manifesting in the husband, wife, and children — I was also experiencing my own psychological recovery. My personal relationship was no longer possible, but through this family’s story, I was able to process my grief and find healing.

Your film weaves together two powerful threads: the intimate portrayal of a family cherishing fleeting moments with their war veteran father and the uneasy tension of trauma seeping into every aspect of their lives. Was this juxtaposition — a loving father’s tenderness with the shadow of war — an intentional choice to drive the narrative?

Yes, it was intentional to build the film on this tension that something was going to happen. You see the loving father, but at the same time, I wanted the viewer to wonder if this father would be able to stay there. He gets very annoyed by the noise around him, including his kids processing the war through their games. But that was their reality — everything they did as a family was somehow connected to the war. It was in the air, like an unspoken presence. I often used the metaphor that I could feel something in the air when I was in their house. Trauma is invisible and repressed in the family. They don’t fully grasp its impact — how it shapes their smallest interactions, their relationships. They don’t see the shadow of war looming over them, but it’s there, and eventually, it breaks them apart. I intentionally juxtaposed the silent moments, where the protagonist withdraws into himself, with scenes of the family’s daily life. He seeks solace in quiet moments, trying to escape the noise of the house, but those silences reflect his inner struggle. This contrast, between moments of tenderness and the strain of unspoken trauma, was central to the story. 

The film captures the conflicting pulls in the protagonist’s life — the longing to return to the front lines (once a soldier, always a soldier), and the desire to feel needed and loved by his family. How did you build this tension?

This tension is rooted in Serhiy’s psychology and reflects the struggles of many men and women returning from the frontlines. War leaves them extremely vulnerable, with a strong need for emotional connection after the losses they’ve experienced. The tragedy lies in the fact that those who haven’t experienced war often struggle to meet these needs or provide the kind of embrace that doesn’t hurt. Metaphorically speaking, it’s just hard to embrace someone who is broken. In Serhiy’s family, this dynamic played out painfully. His children were curious about the war — they wanted to hear stories about grenades and battles — but for him, these questions were excruciating. He felt trapped, needing to process his experiences yet unable to share them without pain. The challenges of returning from war are full of contradictions, and there are no simple answers. What is clear, though, is the urgent need for an army of mental health professionals to support war veterans, volunteers, and all those affected by war.

The theme of vulnerability also appears in your earlier short documentary, Under the Wing of a Night. Do you see this as a recurring preoccupation in your work — not just as a filmmaker, but also as someone drawn to telling invisible stories of people and their unseen wounds?

Yes, I feel that I need to be very close to my protagonists, both emotionally and aesthetically, to be able to tell the kinds of stories I’m interested in. I’m interested in portraying bigger pain, but within an intimate, familial environment. I also lean toward a minimalistic aesthetic, partly because of the constraints of independent filmmaking — limited budgets mean we can’t film in many locations or include numerous characters. Balancing these restrictions, I focus on creating strong, evocative atmospheres. In Under the Wing of a Night, for example, the story is told from the perspective of an 11-year-old girl waiting for calls from her father in Ukraine, who is preparing to become a soldier. The simplicity of such narratives, I believe, allows audiences to connect to them easily, even if they aren’t familiar with documentary filmmaking. This accessibility, paired with the intimate lens through which I present these stories, fascinates me. It’s about making these personal tales resonate widely, even with limited resources.

Trauma is universal, and this documentary reflects themes like the absence of a father or husband, which are universally relatable. Your earlier short, Wounds, seems to explore similar emotional terrain, though perhaps with a different story. Would you say there are parallels between the two, or are they fundamentally different in approach and focus?

Wounds (about three women mourning the loss of their fallen sons and husbands through solidarity) is a different film in many ways. It was the first time I documented the experience of a community to which I didn’t fully belong — I haven’t lost a son or husband in the war. However, as a Ukrainian, I felt it was my duty to make this film after learning about the rehabilitation programme for these women. I wanted to be present with my camera, bearing witness to their experiences. In Wounds, nature plays a significant role. I was genuinely curious if there’s anything in the world that can provide strength when carrying such non-healing wounds.

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After completing the film and returning home, I knew the answer — there’s no escape from this pain. These women will carry their grief for years, perhaps decades. Their healing comes not from moving on, but from speaking to their lost loved ones and finding solace among others who share their loss. This film shaped me in a way. There were nights when I couldn’t sleep after hearing their stories. One woman shared how, in a single day, she lost her son and her entire family. While they were evacuating from the Chernihiv region, Russian soldiers shot them. It’s unimaginable. This woman was religious and believed that God had taken them all together so they wouldn’t suffer separately and could enter heaven as one.

I found myself calling my mother for support, trying to process these overwhelming stories. Losing a child is unnatural — it defies the natural order where children outlive their parents. These people need immense emotional support and, above all, to be heard. What struck me was their willingness to share. I was careful not to probe directly into their pain, yet I sensed that verbalising their stories brought them some relief. That’s the power of documentary filmmaking — it gives people a space to voice their grief, to be seen, and to be understood.

In Dad’s Lullaby, you are physically present, but never intruding. Your gaze feels deeply empathetic, yet unobtrusive. I wanted to ask about something larger: as an artist, how do you stay true to your craft amid so much suffering? When the scale of pain becomes so immense, how do you retain your sanity and navigate this as a filmmaker?

Well, art itself provides a lot of purpose. When the large-scale invasion of my country began, I was paralysed for days. I couldn’t gather my strength; my mind was overwhelmed. I remember being in Brussels, attending protests with my filmmaker colleagues, feeling mentally rooted in Ukraine. But I was completely disoriented — I even boarded the wrong train and found myself lost. At some point, art became my anchor. Making art demands discipline —waking early, exercising, reading, discussing ideas, and connecting with film characters.

This process became a lifeline, a structure that distracted me from the endless pain and constant anxiety. Living perpetually in such a state exhausts the body and mind. Now, two years into the invasion, I feel that I need to do more for my country. I need to listen to more stories, and to stay connected with my parents and my brother in Kyiv. At the same time, I’ve come to realise the importance of self-empathy. It took me a long time to accept that it’s okay to care for myself — I need to nurture my own body, my own soul. Without that, I can’t support others or contribute meaningfully. Thank you for your thoughtful questions — it really feels like reading a philosophical book.

Ukrainian writers and filmmakers have responded to the war in various ways — through novels, poetry, essays, reportage. You have figures like Andrey Kurkov and Serhiy Zhadan, a rockstar writer of Ukraine, documenting this period in their own styles. As a Ukrainian artist, and someone who frequently visits Kyiv, what is your estimation of the devastation of war? How do you make sense of it, and what do you see as the way forward?

I feel as though we are all on trial, and in this trial we will be probably testing our humanity. There is something completely wrong about the dominant world order, driven by consumerism and money. Despite the economic sanctions against Russia, there are still people in the world with no moral compass, selling drones and other equipment to Russia, enabling the war. This war has shattered illusions we create to sustain our lives, and now, from an existential point of view, it feels as if we are all collectively in court, in a way. But the writers like the ones you have mentioned, Serhiy Zhadan, Andrey Kurkov, and others cannot stop creating. They cannot stop telling stories because they feel an immense responsibility, a debt to those who have perished.

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Maksym Kryvtsov, a soldier who was also a poet, is one such figure. His poetry and his ultimate sacrifice in defending our country remind me why we cannot stop. His death drives home the moral imperative to preserve our culture, our sanity. As an artist, I can’t just stop creating because I’m tired or exhausted. I need to make it work somehow. Art sustains me emotionally, but not financially. I often have to take on other work just to keep creating, and there are moments when it feels utterly devastating. But, when I think of people like Maksym or other people who died while defending us, there is a moral dilemma: I cannot stop working. To stay human and preserve our collective humanity, we must continue to create and document.

With Donald Trump returning to power, there is a section of people in Ukraine who have expressed hope that he might end the war sooner than Joe Biden could. Do you share that hope, or do you see things differently?

I don’t share those sentiments. Trump is the president-elect of a powerful country, but he’s dealing with a dictator who is completely unpredictable. The last time Trump engaged with Putin, Ukraine faced a surge of attacks. This shows that you can’t negotiate with someone as insane and ruthless as Putin. Peace cannot be achieved through diplomacy with him — not in the conventional sense. The US just needs to help us withstand the war and overcome it, because it’s not possible to make peace with Putin. For over 30 years, Russia has shown its true intentions, invading not just Ukraine but also Georgia, Moldova, Chechnya, and others. This pattern repeats itself, and yet we fail to learn from history. I’m not a political analyst, but as a documentary filmmaker equipped with the critical lens who is trying to spot the invisible, I find it difficult to place faith in hopes about Trump’s ability to end the war. His return may have fuelled some optimism, but I see it as a temporary hope.