The Border (2022)

In the late summer of 2014, at the height of the armed conflict in the east of Ukraine, two volunteers - machine gunner KABAN [Wild Boar] and platoon commander SHEVA - are on active duty at the Ukraine-Russia border. Kaban was discharged from military service due to a concussion several years ago. Now he tries to return to his airborne assault company and go into military action as soon as possible. Sheva, an intellectual and IT professional, dreams to liberate his home city Donetsk from the separatist rebels. The area around the border outpost has been shelled by Russian artillery for a week. While local residents are fleeing their homes and the Ukrainian troops are retreating, the border guards do not leave their positions. ADVOKAT [Lawyer], driving an infantry fighting vehicle, breaks through to the border outpost from the encircled Savur-Mohyla hill and stays to help defend the border. Kaban is severely wounded in a fierce combat with separatists. He is operated on in a local civilian hospital. On Ukraine's Independence Day, August 24, Russian regular troops cross the border in a massive incursion. The outpost commander orders the border guards to lay down arms and deserts, but they refuse to surrender. At the moment, Sheva happens to be of the second highest rank after the deserter and takes command. In four cars backed up by Advokat's IFV the border guards break out of the encircled township. Russian troops and armed separatists occupy the township. Niusia, a nurse in the local hospital, hides Kaban in the morgue where he spends more than a week under a heap of bodies. Kaban is wanted by Russian special services as an exemplary "Ukrainian fascist" for a show trial and by the local separatists for a ransom. Niusia visits Kaban in the morgue every day. They like each other, but Kaban loves his wife and Niusia is in love with her chief physician who is married. The separatists track Kaban and Miusia down and demand a ransom for her life. Niusia helps Kaban escape across the Russian border and escapes together with the chief physician in the opposite direction. The border guards look for a safe way to the government-controlled port city of Mariupol. Their maps are incorrect, there is no phone service, and they have nearly run out of fuel. Suddenly, they come under targeted fire and Advokat's IFV veers away from the road. The vehicle is hit and Advokat is severely wounded. He is alone in the field, without water, food and medicines. Next morning, Advokat sees a car driving on the empty road across the field. Suddenly, the car is hit by machine gun fire. An old woman, a man, a woman, and a teenage girl are killed. The only survivor is a six-year-old girl. Her dying mother told her to hold on to "Uncle Ivan", as she called Advokat. The wounded girl and Advokat spend the next three days and nights trying to survive and find common language. The border guards pick up wounded Ukrainian soldiers along the way. There are no medics and almost no medications. Many of the wounded need urgent surgery, otherwise their hours are numbered. While breaking out of the encirclement, Sheva proves to be a clever and courageous commander, although he got the officer's rank as a university graduate with very scarce and mostly theoretical military training. Sheva manages to escape the "Ilovaysk pocket" and the slaughter in the so-called "green corridor". At the last moment the column with the wounded soldiers is saved by a daring attack of several Ukrainian tanks and a suicidal feat of one of the border guards. Advokat and the girl crawl to the nearest village. At night the girl runs a fever. Advokat surrenders and the girl is saved by the Russian military. Advokat finds himself among dozens of captured survivors of the Ilovaysk pocket. Kaban crosses the border safely, but there is no way back home: all roads are blocked by Russian troops. The only way for him to get back to Ukraine is via Crimea. At the Chongar crossing point Kaban is met by his wife. The border guards and wounded soldiers finally reach Mariupol. At the checkpoint Sheva sees a very long military column heading for the front line and understands that the real war is only just beginning, and that he will not see his son any time soon.