Scenes from a Baltic Marriage

A few days after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, shocked and terrified and helpless, I thought I would try to help. I walked to Messegelände/ZOB, Berlin’s biggest international bus station, at night, donated some essentials and said I would volunteer and help with the refugees as they came in from Poland. But with limited Russian and zero Ukrainian — and also no experience in this type of work before in my entire life — I essentially stood around for several hours before going home. I would never return. I decided I was better at writing about Ukrainian movies (?), and perhaps pathetically, I could help that way. I also donated some money.

I tell this anecdote about my own incomplete reaction to Europe’s greatest atrocity since the Balkan wars of the 90s not to feel sorry for myself, but to show a simple point: solidarity is actually really hard. And oftentimes, whenever you see people helping out or protesting or posting online, it may not essentially be altruism, but a complex web of conflicting feelings, animated less by empathy than by a deep-seated selfishness; a need to feel good in a terrible, horrible world. 

All of these complex and paradoxical feelings, shot and written like a serious drama but with lacerations of black, brutal wit, are dynamically explored in Andrius Blaževičius’ film How to Divorce During the War (2026), which uses the brittle breakup of a marriage in Lithuania as a metaphor for European solidarity with Ukraine during the early stages of Russia’s pointless war. Less about Ukraine and more about Lithuanian — and by extension, European — myopia, this brave film looks inwards with a savage, thought-provoking wisdom.  

Right from the very beginning, we are thrust into proper domestic territory, stay-at-home husband and intermittent filmmaker Vytaus (Marius Repšys) receiving a new office chair in his pristine flat.  He assembles it, sits in it and pulls himself to the desk. Then he decides to go back to his old chair. 

His wife, Marija (Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė), a high-powered executive at a content factory named Hungry Rabbit, is far less comfortable with the current set-up. Having a lesbian affair with a colleague and bored as hell with her husband’s stodginess, she tells him in the car — their daughter Dovile (Amelija Adomaitytė) at her violin lesson — that she wants to end it. This scene, a long, long push-in from outside the vehicle, is an actor’s masterclass, immersing us in the long history of this relationship as it crumbles in real time. 

But that’s not half of it. Because the very next night, the bald ratfucker gives the word, and Russia is bombing Kyiv. The fortunes of this couple, navigating the pains of separation, singledom and co-parenting, are thus closely intertwined with the Lithuanian response to the war, providing a fascinating reverie on what it actually means to stand with Ukraine beyond slogans and niceties. Virtue-signallers beware! You might not like what you see. This is Perfection (Vincenzo Latronico, 2022) for Lithuanians.

With real nuance and patience, Blaževičius captures the confusing tumult of those times, from the first reactions (“Are we next?”) to the need to help, as well as Lithuania’s complicated relationship to its former Soviet overlord. While Marija quits her job (they still pay taxes in Russia) and takes in Ukrainian refugees, Vytaus helps out at a food centre and joins performance art protests, even while his parents, with help from satellite TV, still watch Russian propaganda. We never know how much of what they are doing is simply the need to one-up the other, or to channel the difficulty of a break-up, or to look good to the people around them, the film happy to take an ambiguous and darkly comic approach to Baltic self-centredness in the face of international atrocities. The command of tone here is simply electric, the implications immense. 

The film won Best Director at the World Cinema Dramatic Competition in Sundance this January, a great achievement for the director. But I can’t help but wonder why this movie, which is so much about the European context, had its premiere in the USA. There are bits and jokes here, which are so specific to the muddy and complex Lithuanian-Russian relationship (one scene near the end had me cackling), that screamed for a world premiere in an Eastern European nation. 

Anyway, every European scared of Russian aggression and concerned for Ukraine should watch this movie. Just brace to have your long-held beliefs, your liberal niceties, your empathetic blindspots to be challenged, which is what real art should do! And when you feel sad, just remember who the real victims of this war are. Not you in Lithuania, or you in Czechia, or you in London, or Sundance. It’s the Ukrainians. It’s always the poor Ukrainians. 

Here’s a list of resources for donation: https://www.huri.harvard.edu/how-you-can-help-ukraine. Ease your liberal guilt today!