ВІДКРИТИЙ СВІТ
Ukraine
A few years after fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion, a boy returns home via a robotic dog, his mechanical avatar, which he controls from his room in Poland. Through this remote presence, he relives memories and reconnects with his past – a connection that now depends on a fragile video stream that could be cut off at any moment.
In this short documentary, we turn to technology as a means of repair. A cyber dog, originally developed and used by the Ukrainian military for reconnaissance, becomes transformed in our film. We have reimagined this instrument of war, transforming it into an avatar of a displaced boy from Khortytsia – an island scarred by Russian missile strikes.
Through him, the boy attempts to return home, to reconnect with the land he was forced to leave behind. For us, this is not only a film but a gesture: an insistence that connection endures despite rupture, that distance cannot erase belonging, and that imagination and art remain powerful tools for preserving identity. HOMECOMING is our way of rethinking what it means to return – not as a physical act, but as a deeply human longing to remain tied to the place we call home.
A few years after fleeing Ukraine following the Russian invasion, a boy returns home via a robotic dog, his mechanical avatar, which he controls from his room in Poland. Through this remote presence, he relives memories and reconnects with his past – a connection that now depends on a fragile video stream that could be cut off at any moment.
