SYNOPSYS

Strawberry Field (The Director’s Cut) is a raw, observational documentary filmed over six months near Ukraine’s frontlines. Without electricity, safety, or basic infrastructure, filmmaker Alexandra-Roberta Șerban embedded herself with a mixed Russian-Ukrainian family—capturing moments of life, love, and resistance among the ruins of war.

This film follows the Sidovych family, who, despite living only 50 kilometers from the front, hold onto the impossible dream of planting a strawberry field. Their land, shaped like a heart from above, becomes a metaphor for human dignity. Through unfiltered, poetic footage, the documentary focuses not on military conflict, but on what remains unbroken in civilians: their will to sing, to dance, to dream.

ABOUT THE FILM

Strawberry Field is not a political film—it is a human one. Shot in Karibinovka, a transit village under constant rocket fire, it documents a family’s daily life amid war. There are no special effects, no dramatizations—just stationary shots, real sounds, and authentic moments.

The film reveals the invisible: what it means to remain, to raise children where there is no way out, to find love across enemy lines, and to sing under sirens.

THE SIDOVYCH FAMILY

Vitalii, the Ukrainian father with Polish roots, Anna, the Ukrainian mother from Donbass, Sofia, Mark, and Maksym, the children who continue to play and laugh through chaos. One of the children, Maksym—Anna’s son from a previous marriage—was born in Donbass and has lost his documents. Without adoption, the family cannot evacuate. Still, they dream of turning their war-torn land into a strawberry field.

Vitalii Volodimirovich Sidovych

Anna Volodimirivma Sidovych

Maksym Andriyovich Radchenko

Mark Vitaliovych Sidovych

Sofia Vitaliivna Sidovych