The first comedy about Ukrainians defending their country against Russia and its proxies is flawed. But its intentions are flawless: “Lethal Kittens” aims to treat traumas of Ukraine’s defenders and the wider Ukrainian community, including those who distanced themselves from the war.
While it probably won’t win the hearts and minds of Ukrainians who sympathize with Russia, the film should do the job of invigorating the hearts and minds of Ukrainian patriots, both home and abroad. It should do so through smiles and tears, appealing characters and slashing satire on their enemy.
“This movie charges (viewers) with positive energy because finally these emotions and attitudes of ours about this war came to the big screen,” war veteran Oleksa Sokil told the Kyiv Post.
“But the film is not for everybody (in Ukraine),” another veteran Oleskandr Matiash says. “Most of our society ignores the war, they block the function of understanding that our country is in a dire situation. They will not be interested.”
Heroes and enemies
“Lethal Kittens” (“Nashi Kotyky”) is set in 2014, the first year of the war. Like thousands of ordinary Ukrainians, three men — a florist, an engineer and an actor — volunteer to fight in Donbas, each with his own motivation — vain, noble or in-between. But none of them wants to waste time on an insignificant position along the frontline where they get deployed. It’s a shithole, literally: other soldiers nicknamed it “The Toilet” for having the best Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe-approved latrine.
Fortunately or not, the Russian command decides to launch an offensive on this neglected Ukrainian position led by Chechen fighters and a Russian general. Through luck, courage and some cues from the supernatural, the three Ukrainian volunteers destroy this unit of Russia-led militants.
The next day, they are joined by their commander and soccer coach, a chaplain and a female journalist pursuing exclusive footage. They fend off waves of vengeful separatists and Russian special forces for the rest of the movie. In the end, this inexperienced motley crew of Ukrainians become heroes, and the position they defended gets renamed to honor one of them.
The overly simple story is the film’s major weakness. But it’s made up of some strong scenes driven by relatable characters who are not ideal and have internal struggles. They joke around, play tricks and fight with each other, but come together and bond when they face the enemy.
The film, which brands itself as a “politically incorrect patriotic comedy,” could only paint the Russian military and its proxy separatist forces as caricature villains and their minions, respectively. But it goes further to dehumanize the enemy in a scene clearly intended to provoke.
When a female journalist tells the volunteers she feels bad for the killed Russian and separatist militants because “they are humans first of all,” one of the main characters responds: “These are not humans.” As if to prove this point, two separatists attempt to kidnap and rape the journalist in the next scene when she tries to interview them.
The only enemy receiving some humane treatment from the protagonists is a separatist collaborator who switches to the Ukrainian side. He is encouraged to do so by his mother-in-law and teenage daughter, who tells him, “I told you they (the Ukrainian soldiers) were good.” This is the strongest message the movie can muster to address the minds lost to Russian propaganda.
Seriousness aside, “Lethal Kittens” is outrageously funny. At least, it is for those who get it, since much of its humor is based on the news that Ukrainians heard from the front line in the first years of the war. And its most insightful jokes are informed by knowledge of the volunteers’ lives on the front line.
Director, actors and producers of “Lethal Kittens” pose for a group photograph after the press conference for the film’s premiere on Jan. 29, 2020. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Therapeutic effect
Volodymyr Tykhyy, the writer and director of “Lethal Kittens,” is also a co-founder of the Babylon ‘13 documentary film community that most actively covered the lives of Ukrainian volunteers in the first years of the war. Based on their stories, Tykhyy and Babylon ‘13 decided to create a 12-episode miniseries called “The Bunker” (“Blindazh”) in 2015. Major Ukrainian TV channels didn’t see it as appropriate to put on the air, so the filmmakers made only three episodes that are now available online.
But then volunteers started to send more stories and videos about their lives on the frontline to Tykhyy. So in 2017, he wrote a screenplay based on this material with real quotes and jokes from the soldiers. The goal was to show and remind all Ukrainians, not just the soldiers, how ordinary men and women volunteered to defend their country against Russia’s war.
“Even that large part of our society that shielded themselves and didn’t read any news was still traumatized by these events,” Tykhyy told the Kyiv Post. “They still feel guilty about it. And one of the goals of the film is to build that bridge for them to understand what is still happening in the country.”
The movie got its name from the way the activists who supported the army called the volunteers soldiers — “kotyky,” or “kittens.” The budget of “Lethal Kittens” is over Hr 42 million ($1.7 million) — the money Tykhyy raised from his friends, the producers of the movie. The film also received almost Hr 2 million ($80,500) of taxpayer money through the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation and the State Film Agency.
One of the producers is Ulana Suprun, a Ukrainian-American physician who taught tactical medicine to volunteer soldiers in 2014–15 and served as Ukraine’s acting health minister in 2016–19. Suprun joined the producers’ team after she left the ministry and says that war comedies can be therapeutic for the veterans and active servicepersons.
“One of the things that helped volunteer soldiers to remain sane on the frontline is to use humor and laugh. Also, when relative strangers are put together, humor can be a way of building camaraderie and help bond as a team,” Suprun told the Kyiv Post.
Andriy Kozinchuk, a psychologist who works with veterans and active servicepersons with Veterans’ Movement of Ukraine, agrees.
“The film can’t cure completely — that’s for sure. But humor helps remain sane when things we’re not used to start to happen. It’s also a kind of a lubricant that helps reduce friction when there are political tensions,” Kozinchuk told The Kyiv Post.
Like his character in the film, actor Dmytro Tuboltsev also volunteered to defend Ukraine in 2014, so it’s almost as if he plays himself in “Lethal Kittens.” Tuboltsev says that through mocking and insulting the enemy, the soldiers can relax and become less dangerous to themselves.
“We don’t want to aggravate things with this movie. Through humor, we want to see these events clearly with a hot heart and cold head,” Tuboltsev says.
“Lethal Kittens” will be screened with English subtitles at the Zhovten cinema in Kyiv on Jan. 31 – Feb. 5. See all screenings in The Kyiv Post’s calendar of events.
