‘I feel like I’m in Sex and the City’ – the women who fled Ukraine to start anew
In the weeks that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, forcing millions to flee the country carrying their bare essentials through the snow, photographer Polly Braden flew to Moldova, on the south-west border. She spent her time there building relationships with people, asking if they wanted to be part of something long-term. “I am more interested in telling one story for a long time than a lot of stories quickly,” she says.
Braden’s previous project, Holding the Baby, had been about single parents. When the Ukrainian refugee crisis hit, says Braden, “as a single parent [myself], I was seeing all these women essentially become single parents, but also carrying grandparents, maybe a niece or other children, too. I imagined the enormity of what that was going to mean, having to get their kids to school, find work and homes, negotiate local bureaucracy – that takes single parenting to a whole other level.”
The resulting exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London documents the lives of several of these women and children over a tumultuous two years, as they became increasingly scattered across Europe.
Lena, 21, was a law graduate from Mykolaiv, a city in the south-west of Ukraine, and part of a group of 16 sharing a room that included three grandparents and her mum. “She had trained to be a lawyer,” says Braden, “and suddenly, all she had to do was scroll through the news. She had a lot of guilt about having to leave, when all her male friends had to stay.”
After a few months, Moldova started to feel dangerous so Lena and her mother – a sign-language interpreter on the news in Ukraine – decided to move on. Her mother wanted to go to Italy, where she had some contacts. Lena, who was fluent in English, went to stay with Braden under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. She got a job at a law firm, and there’s a photograph of her around that time sitting pensively on the bus, caught in a sliver of sunlight.“I feel like I’m in Sex and the City,” she told Braden. But her situation was too complex to be a fairytale ending. “She felt so much pressure to succeed because she had all this opportunity,” says Braden. Her mother is now back in Ukraine, doing her old job.
Another compelling story centres on three 15-year-old girls – Sofiia, Aliesia and Yuliia – who had been at the same school in Mykolaiv. All across Europe, Ukrainian schools offered online learning. “They were working in different time zones,” says Braden. “Teachers might also have been abroad with their kids, or in Ukraine and when the bomb sirens were going off, they would have to go down to the basement, trying to stay online.”
Braden captures the girls daydreaming, looking at their phones, and a room in Krakow full of bunk beds with a kitchenette at the end. This was where Aliesia had ended up after a protracted overland journey to Spain, staying in refugee camps along the way. But the plan to stay with a relative there didn’t work out so they returned to Krakow. In Krakow, her mother and aunt got cleaning jobs in a hotel but after their permitted 90 rent-free days ran out, they couldn’t afford to pay for the room. They went back to Mykolaiv where Aliesia finished school last July and is now at a Kyiv university, although she can’t physically be there because the dormitories are full of displaced people.
Her friend Sofiia started out in Poland and went to school there for four months. “Her mum was earning money at a factory, working nights, [to support] two kids from their village, a niece, Sofiia and a grandmother,” says Braden. “She got bad problems with her legs and her breathing. She had a cousin in Switzerland, and decided to drive there and start again.” Six months later, Sofiia was still doing online learning, which was taking its toll. “She is very gregarious, usually forms big friendship groups and she got really depressed,” says Braden. Despite this, she learned German and got into a gymnasium – “one of the top Swiss schools.”
Yuliia, the third girl in the group, started off in Bulgaria with her mum and grandparents. They stayed with some friends but her paternal grandfather didn’t have a passport which meant that after 90 days, they had to leave. They went to Warsaw, where Yuliia continued with online learning. “She told me she used to go and cry in the bathroom, and that she didn’t know how to make friends any more,” says Braden. Yuliia is now enrolled in film studies at the University of Warsaw, where she has made new friends.
Last summer, the three girls reunited in Ukraine for prom. “They got dressed up in prom dresses and recorded themselves, and that’s going to be part of a film in the show that will bring them to life and let them speak for themselves.” Braden has two teenage children herself and says the real joy of working with this age group is that even when “they have complex emotions, and massive things happening, they’re still teenagers and they want to talk about boyfriends, they want friendships, they want touch and they need all the things that young people need. They live in the present.”
Leaving Ukraine is at the Foundling Museum in London from 15 March to 1 September
these were the only characters they owned the legal rights to outside of the wall-crawler himself. Next up for the studio is 2025’s Kraven the Hunter, which will star Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the comic book big-game hunter (the movie version will reportedly be more of a conservationist). But given there’s no immediate sense of why anyone would actually want to see it, and that Spider-Man himself rarely turns up in these films, it’s hard to see it flourishing.
There does seem to be a solution, however. Sony’s decision to allow Holland’s Spider-Man to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe was reportedly a combination of the box office failure of 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and a clause in the contract for its rights to the character, which meant that the studio must start production on a new dedicated Spider-film once every five years and nine months or give them up. Presumably this is why Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter have been earmarked for release in the current period, to avoid Sony accidentally losing its rights to Spidey while it is waiting for Marvel to stop twiddling its thumbs on what to do next with the Holland version of the webslinger.
Surely though, there is a better way forward here. The success of the “Home” trilogy proves that the problem with Spider-Man on the big screen was not the character, but Sony’s inability to avoid telling the same story over and over again every few years. Once released into a complex and fascinating multiverse that did not require him to constantly recycle his well-worn origin story, Peter Parker’s alter ego has flourished. Moreover, the recent movies offered up multiple ways forward for the character either within or without the MCU.
One suggestion is to revive the adventures of the Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield versions of Spidey, both of whom made a triumphant and thrilling return in 2021’s SpiderMan: No Way Home. Thomas Haden Church, who played villain Sandman in both that film and Sam Raimi’s Sonyproduced Spider-Man 3, back in 2007, this week told Comicbook.com he had heard rumblings in the ether that Maguire might soon be back in the suit.
“Sandman … there’s been some rumours that they might ask me to do another Spider-Man, and I’d do it tomorrow,” Church said. “You know, they never asked me to show up in another movie, another Marvel film, but I think Sam is going to do another Spider-Man with Tobey. That’s the one that – I was actually, they had an option for me to do Spider-Man 4, when there was going to be a Spider-Man 4. They had an option on me to come back. So, if it happens, that would be fantastic.”
The advantage of continuing Maguire-Spidey’s adventures, or even teaming him up with Garfield-Spidey, is that this could be easily accomplished without requiring Marvel’s input. While there is expected to be a fourth SpiderMan movie set in the MCU at some point, Holland does not yet seem to have decided if he will return to the role.
And yet fans are crying out for more stories in ways they never were prior to No Way Home’s release. Raimi, provided Sony gives him free rein and does not engage in the kind of studio interference that dogged both Spider-Man 3 and (seemingly) the new Spider-Verse movies, is the perfect director to take the project forward.
You never know, Sony might even be able to bring back characters such as Venom, Morbius and Madame Web in movies we actually want to see them in, ie as villainous foils for Spider-Man himself, rather than the heroes of their own stories. Whether Dakota Johnson could be expected to return after declaring herself pretty much done with superheroes, is probably still open to question.
tarts, including A24 and Neon, coming up behind. A best picture win evades Netflix and looks like it might still for the near future.
Bradley Cooper – winner! Really!
If 90% of success is just showing up, then Bradley Cooper simply has to be in the winners portion of this list. Because no one has done more of that than Maestro’s director-star. Few nominees put in more hours in pursuit of Oscar gold than Coops – and this for a film that was considered doomed for most of awards season and that much of the internet intensely hated. He even rocked up on sitcom Abbott Elementary, which aired immediately after the Oscars, to get the last word in. Imagine what Cooper will do with a film that people actually enjoy?
Robert De Niro – almost a winner!
He never had a shot at the best supporting actor statue, but a fumble by Tim Robbins when splurging out praise for the Killers of the Flower Moon star appeared to actively announce him as the victor. Robbins was abashed; DeNiro cheerful – certainly more so than after Kimmel’s crack about how when he and Jodie Foster shot Taxi Driver she was too young to be his daughter but is now too old to be his girlfriend. Still, compared to longtime compadre Al Pacino, DeNiro certainly emerges from this year’s Oscars a relative winner, even if Robbins was wrong.
Donald Trump – loser!
He just couldn’t resist, could he? We were so close to having a blissfully Trump-free Oscars – no one made any laboured speeches about the end of democracy, small hands, and so forth. But then from the bowels of Truth Social came a post. “Has there EVER been a WORSE HOST than Jimmy Kimmel at The Oscars” (incoherent CAPS and lack of question mark model’s own). And, due to the zippy runtime of this year’s ceremony, Kimmel had a spare minute to respond with way more brevity and punch than the former president. “Isn’t it past your jail time?” was all he needed.
First-timers – winners!
While one of the night’s big awards might have been taken home by someone who had only recently just won in the same category, much to her and our surprise, the ceremony was dominated by first-timers. There were Cord Jefferson and Justine Triet winning for adapted and original screenplay, threetime nominee Robert Downey Jr and Da’Vine Joy Randolph for supporting actor and actress, Cillian Murphy for actor, Christopher Nolan for director and Jonathan Glazer for international feature. The grand Oppenheimer sweep might have given the end-note a feeling of the old but it was an exciting night for the new.
Louis Vuitton’s zips – loser!
Few things make moments more memorable than a sartorial slip-up and Emma Stone’s broken frock while accepting her Oscar for best actress for her role in Poor Things is no exception. The star wore a custom strapless gown by Louis Vuitton on Sunday that seemingly got through most of the show – until Ryan Gosling’s performance of I’m Just Ken. Clearly, Gosling’s seambusting moves had such an impact on Stone, who said she’s “pretty sure” her dress zipper broke in the midst of the song. Gosling as a peplum popper: 1. Stone accepting her award with an undamaged gown? 0.
Godzilla – winner!
Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was when Godzilla Minus One won the Oscar for best visual effects, beating big-budget films Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning to show that you can make what looks like a $200m film on a $15m budget. The delighted Japanese team – Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima – traipsed onstage in their special matching Godzilla claw shoes, before Yamazaki handed over his Godzilla toy to deliver a moving speech. “My career began 40 years ago after the shock of seeing Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. To someone so far from Hollywood, the possibility of standing on this stage seemed out of reach. And the moment we were nominated, we felt like Rocky Balboa,” he said.
Josh Hartnett fans – winners!
While Josh Hartnett’s Hollywood renaissance is primarily a gift to millennials, it’s one we can all enjoy. His recent appearance in Oppenheimer brought him to the Oscars stage on Sunday, helping to accept the award for best picture, and fans rejoiced at the sight. The hope of seeing Hartnett at even more award shows in the future is a glorious victory.
Spielberg’s odds of bagging an acting Oscar – winner!
Move over Martin Scorsese: there’s a new veteran director currently killing it in front of the cameras. Steven Spielberg’s reaction shots over the course of the evening demonstrate that he, too, could wipe the floor with many of the performers in his employ. First there was the wafer-dry nod when the camera cut to him after Kimmel said: “This is what the kid from The Fabelmans looks like now.” And later some absolutely beautiful looks to camera as it apparently emerged he was the recipient of Kate McKinnon’s tasteful nudes.
Field of Dreams – winner!
Watch out, Kimmel: John Mulaney is coming for your job and he will possibly do it better than you. Mulaney’s 90 seconds onstage were an incredible audition – using the best sound design category to launch into a perfect ramble about the 1989 Kevin Costner vehicle Field of Dreams, ending with: “I guess there’s a rule in ghost baseball, that if you leave the field at any point to become an elderly ghost and do the Heimlich manoeuvre, you can’t return to the field. I love Field of Dreams. That should win best picture! But they’ll probably go with one of this year’s.” It was silly. It was genuinely fun. It was everything they don’t usually like at the Oscars so maybe we willget Kimmel again next year.
Jonathan Glazer – winner!
Jonathan Glazer, a director who has made just four full-length films in the last 24 years, has never been someone visibly thirsting for an Oscar. Ben Kingsley might have sneaked a nomination for Sexy Beast and in a just world, both Nicole Kidman and Scarlett Johansson would have been in the best actress race for their roles in Birth and Under the Skin, but his films have never conformed in the way that voters prefer. Even when he chose to make a second world war film, arguably the easiest way to attract the Academy, he made one that was colder and harder than wehad ever experienced before, undeniably arresting but arguably closer to an art installation than a narrative film. Against all odds, a more artfully inclined voting body somehow approved and The Zone of Interest won both sound and international feature. It’s not something Glazer has campaigned for and clearly not something he’s driven by but it’s a long-deserved moment in the spotlight for someone who has always thrived in the dark.
Messi – winner! Matt Damon – loser!
Despite reports that Messi might miss the Oscars, the dog responsible for one of the most harrowing scenes in Anatomy of a Fall did indeed appear to show – and got his own seat and everything. “Messi has an overdose scene,” Kimmel quipped in his monologue. “I haven’t seen a French actor eat vomit like that since Gérard Depardieu.”
The Palm Dog winner was a crowd favourite last month too, becoming enamoured with Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper and Billie Eilish at the nominees luncheon. Jury’s still out on Matt Damon though.