Animals in War: War as a Magnifying Glass

Animals in War is an anthology of seven short films credited to Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, which we had the pleasure of watching at Tribeca Film Festival 2025. It’s a Work in Progress listed on IMDb as War Through the Eyes of Animals, a title that gets the idea across better. Each vignette tells a human story set in the Ukraine War that prominently features a different animal. 

Slaboshpytskiy enlists the help of Sean Penn to start the anthology off with “The Eagle.” Penn plays a sound editor collaborating remotely with a field tech trying to position himself somewhere with no background noise so they can capture footage of an eagle. The tech moves from spot to spot as Penn’s character directs him and listens carefully for background noise. What’s that sound? It won’t go away. Is it the land humming with the half life of radioactive material? Is it a helicopter? Suddenly a rush of the audio of war overwhelms the soundscape as Penn falls to his knees, screaming, overstimulated, dribbling at the mouth and eyes bloodshot with the veins in his neck coming out. 

A standing metaphor to set the tone: if you are looking for silence and beauty then this war will drive you mad.

Breaking from the order of presentation, some installments continued that tone, like “Sonny,” by Oleksii Mamedov. The story begins as a tragedy. A woman is talking to an empty space in the backseat of her car while she drives. War forces her through dangerous situations to pick up a wolf cub, who becomes an outlet for her most humane impulses. If illness is a state of health exaggerated into imbalance, then this woman’s madness is her humanity with its dials turned all the way up. Eventually she reaches a place of acceptance and peace. 

Look at what this war is doing to us.

The same sentiment is echoed in “Cow In The Fog” by Sviatoslav Kostiuk, which tells a story of what happens when the Russians come to town. A boy is sent on a Sisyphean task to protect himself. Returning home he finds that it’s no longer a place he can shelter. Wandering and relegated to the safety of the grasslands separating the houses, his Sisyphean task prolongs into an ordeal that seems like a microcosmic deconstruction of the enterprise of life. Befriending a cow, an animal that’s been artificially selected to require human shepherding, he finds himself with company. The mutually nourishing relationship grows, and when he gets the opportunity for shelter, he chooses it on the condition of his humanity.

“Torpedo” is Yulia Shashkova’s entry into the anthology and is about a man with Down Syndrome who likes hanging out with his grandma’s goat, Torpedo. The weakest short film of the collection, the story illustrates the Russian military’s cruelty toward vulnerable people and becomes a revenge fantasy where the inevitable becomes the fantasy's wage.

Sacrifice also colors “Underwater Adventure” by Ivan Sautkin. The short opens making us think we’re in for a certain type of story, only to reveal that it was clever sound design with intentional camera work. We are with a family, including two siblings, who must all evacuate. The adolescent older brother decides to do everything in his power to maintain that same certain type of story we began with earlier, for his pre-school age younger sister. In a wonderful homage to the role of story itself, he protects her while exposing himself to the world’s cruel non-fiction.

As film has explored for decades, hope is a treasure in hard times, and Maksym Tuzov’s “The Rabbit” is one such, harrowing, illustration. The only installment that we get from the animal’s point of view and my favorite of the anthology, we follow a fluffy white bunny rabbit. He behaves like a scared rabbit when war comes and the humans around him bring the full richness of their humanity to him. This symbol of jittery, displaced innocence traverses multiple chaotic, lethal circumstances, sheltered by the humble heroism of everyday people, who themselves are protected by the trained, selfless heroism of Ukraine’s military to deliver them from threat. The short film ends with a gorgeous statement on the crucial significance of defending innocence to those mired in the miasma of injustice and trauma.

Here it’s important to recall “Sonny,” from earlier. Yes, this short film is a tragedy, but only in its beginning. The maternal figure’s relentless hope and determination render her a sort of hero. Indeed her willpower inspires a physician, himself tired, traumatized and on-edge, into coming into a heroic patience. His heroism gives her a fighting chance, which in turn gives her the ability to finally let go of the ghost that’s been imbalancing her. 

Look at what this war is doing to us… yet look at what we still are.

Until now I’ve mostly given these shorts out of order, out of convenience for writing this review. The only other short that I will present to you in the order of presentation is the last one, for good reason. 

“We’re all right” by Andrii Lidahovsky was the perfect way to end this anthology. A Kyivan man has a way out of Ukraine. He’s going to miss a party and needs to give his cat to his parents before leaving. The cat runs off and he makes a choice, not all at once, but implicitly. Gradually we realize he’s staying; his visible relief at finding his cat isn’t just about the cat. At the party the lights go out, explosions in the sky draw everyone outside.

“Hey weren't you supposed to be on a train?”

He smiles back.

We’re all right.

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