THE LONGER YOU BLEED / ЧИМ ДОВШЕ ТИ СТІКАЄШ КРОВ'Ю

Leonid Nefedovich
Sep 26
2 min read

2025 / 73' / documentary / Germany, Ukraine, United Kingdom

This personal documentary follows displaced Ukrainians in Berlin contending with the traumatic absurdity of watching their homeland burn, in real-time, through pixels on Instagram.

Shot over a year, the camera follows the director’s partner and her friends who – far from the war but still deeply entangled in its emotional fallout – navigate their new reality amidst the daily storm of traumatic war imagery online.

As the characters contend with their growing detachment from the horrors of war, absurdist humor emerges as a coping mechanism; a lens the film appropriates to critique post-industrial society as a space for processing trauma. The documentary examines the alarming shift in how we as a society are engaging with images of war, and how they, in turn, are engaging with us.

Through its unique blend of intimacy and abstraction, The Longer You Bleed offers a sobering meditation on the emotional costs of living in a world oversaturated with information.

Screenings schedule:

October 3, 2025 at 2:15 p.m. at the Zhovten Cinema, Kinoman Hall

Buy ticket

DIRECTOR - EWAN WADDELL

Biography

Ewan Waddell is an emerging British filmmaker whose work has been exhibited and screened internationally. His professional history involves working as a film and art director, as well as a journalist and writer. His debut short film Fragmented Youth (2020) won the Audience award at TANZAHOi International Film Festival, and his 2022 narrative short SPIEGEL is now streaming on NoBudge. In 2022 also, Waddell was commissioned by Korean furniture artist Sanghyeok Lee to write and direct the experimental short film, The Chair. Later that year, Lee and Waddell reunited to co-write and co-direct The Chair’s sequel, The Doorknob, for the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture.

Waddell’s debut narrative feature, Jellyfish, world premiered at the 2025 Long Beach Underground Film Festival, whilst his debut documentary feature, The Longer You Bleed, world premiered at Hot Docs 2025 in Toronto. Waddell is currently in development for his second feature documentary, which will explore the use of psychedelic-assisted therapies in war-torn Ukraine, through the ethereal lens of thermal imaging.

He received First-class Honours during his Bachelor's in Cinema & Photography at the University of Leeds (UK) and Distinction, as well as Valedictorian status, during his Masters at Catalyst Institute in Berlin.

Selected filmography