GRANTEE
My Kharkiv: Fortress of Solitude is a film documenting how residents of Ukraine’s second-largest city have endured Russia’s war of aggression from 2022 to 2025. Filmmaker Katya Soldak, a native of Kharkiv, returns from New York to her hometown to follow four local artists and two childhood friends as they navigate daily life under constant bombing. The film captures intimate stories of resistance—from a poet-turned-drone operator to a psychologist treating children with PTSD—while exploring its subjects’ personal choices about whether to stay or flee from Kharkiv, which is located just 30 km from the Russian border. Through these authentic Ukrainian voices, the documentary preserves essential testimonies for future scholars of this conflict, ensuring the human experience of war remains central to how this history is understood.