June Wormwood (2025)

The authentic testimony of an eyewitness of the Second World War is being released.

Feature films about the Great Patriotic War are a very important matter. And to pay tribute to the heroes and keep their feat in memory, and to show it to new generations of viewers. But even the best of them do not give a complete picture of how it really was. In documentary films, personal perception of what is happening is often lost in attempts to keep up with objectivity. All the more valuable for us are the testimonies of direct eyewitnesses, which, unfortunately, are decreasing every year.

"June Wormwood," directed by Yulia Bocharova, is not a feature film, but it is also not a documentary in the conventional sense. This is exactly the testimony of an eyewitness. Authentic. It's true. His name is Viktor Gladyshev. By the beginning of the war, he was a child. He was too young to join the army, but he was old enough and conscious enough to remember everything he had experienced. And these are absolutely monstrous things. And so, many decades later, Viktor Georgievich met Yulia, a television producer at that time, on a program dedicated to Victory Day. She immediately decided that she needed to make a big movie out of the story she had heard.

Viktor Georgievich sits in front of the camera and talks about his family, about his father. About how my father went to the front, how the Germans came. About how he was captured – about hunger, cold, and the incomprehensible and incomprehensible cruelty of the invaders. Her voice trembles periodically, and tears flow down her face. But he tells it because it needs to be told. We need people to hear this. To know firsthand.
A total of nine hours of material were recorded for the film. The painting itself lasts just under an hour and a half. In addition to Viktor Gladyshev himself and his memories, there are scenes that visualize these memories accurately enough, and most importantly, truthfully. Thanks to both the camera work and the wordless but natural delivery of mostly unprofessional actors. Without too much naturalism, it makes your blood run cold. The visual series does not attract attention, but complements the narrative of the main character. The story, in turn, seems uneven, confused, and therefore sincere, not staged. It jumps from topic to topic, from event to event, from one time period to another and back again.

Janusz Korczak (real name Henrik Goldschmidt, an outstanding writer, teacher, and doctor who devoted his whole life to orphaned children and went to the Treblinka death camp with his students, even though the Nazis offered him freedom) suddenly bursts into it, or a little girl who embodies the future makes an inspiring speech, then the writer Natalia Sukhinina (who wrote a book about Viktor Gladyshev) comments on what is happening. Thanks to this move, "June Wormwood" is perceived not as a staged film, but as a lively conversation on the waves of memory.
And first of all, it's like the truth, which you don't always find in ordinary movies. Somewhere, perhaps, it is presented clumsily, not according to the laws of drama. And in general, not according to any laws. But it's bone-chilling. The truth, as it should be, is bitter. And, as expected, sobering.