DON'T ASK ME IF I KILLED / НЕ ПИТАЙ МЕНЕ, ЧИ Я ВБИВАЛА

Jul 15
2 min read

2025 / 104' / documentary / Romania, Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine

When the Russian invasion shatters her world, Ukrainian documentary filmmaker Olena Maksom puts down her camera to pick up a rifle, and later — both. Throughout more than a thousand days of war, she films the moral ordeal of ordinary people forced to kill, and the fragile struggle to preserve their own souls as violence becomes an everyday reality.

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DIRECTOR - HELENA MAKSYOM

Biography

Olena Maksom is a Ukrainian documentary film director and a reserve officer in the National Guard of Ukraine. She graduated with honours from the National Aviation University in Kyiv, where she obtained a Master’s degree in Ecology and Environmental Protection. She has worked in the media and film industry as a journalist, translator, writer, project manager, camerawoman and director.

Her feature-length debut, Everything Will Not be Fine (2020), co-directed with Adrian Pirvu, had its international premiere at IDFA and won numerous awards, including prizes for Best Ukrainian Feature Film and Best Director at the Odesa International Film Festival, as well as a number of international awards and nominations, notably from the Romanian Film Academy.

Following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Olena joined evacuation and humanitarian missions, and in 2022, she enlisted in the Ukrainian National Guard. She served until 2025, taking part in a number of key operations, including the liberation of the Kharkiv region, combat operations in the Luhansk region, and the battles for Bakhmut and Pokrovsk, before being demobilised to the reserve with the rank of captain. Alongside her military service, she documented the war from the inside with a camera in her hands.

Olena is a graduate of the EsoDoc international documentary programme.

Selected filmography