Ganna Yarovenko’s documentary Mama’s Voice portrays the experience of a family displaced from Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian war, highlighting daily life and artistic healing.
Mama’s Voice grips the viewer from the beginning. Social media clips capture the heat of the Russian invasion in Ukraine. They flash by from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Vladimir Putin, tanks and bright explosions, to people exclaiming from their windows or the street. The audience is taken a step further from the familiar world of social media to Yarovenko’s personal footage of the road and the filmmaker flipping off Putin, who describes the conflict as the “de-Nazification of Ukraine”.
The Yarovenko family is split during a shelling. Ganna (pronounced “Anya”), her mother, Nina, and her kids, Malva and Orest, leave for Mława, Poland. Wartime restrictions rarely allow men to leave Ukraine, so Malva and Orest’s father, Yaroslav, and their grandfather, Petro, stay. Petro takes care of their home property in Zabuchchya village. He finds solace in his garden. He prunes his pear tree after the shelling and ties his white flowers, heavy with petals, upright to a stick. Petro recognizes the irony in caring for plants during war, a time of death. He counts the branches on his persimmon plant. “You see, I’m alive, and the persimmon is alive,” he says.
In Poland, his family gardens. As he chops wood, so does his grandson Orest. Orest is welcomed into Polish school while continuing Ukrainian school online. His cousin helps him with Physics. Malva sings and plays with her brother. She wants to save candies from Ukraine. When her mother asks if she remembers home, she says she remembers the forest but not the house. She doesn’t remember Kyiv. They stay in the home of Kaja (pronounced “Kaya”). Kaja, an artist of many mediums, paints, sings, and teaches folklore. Ganna says the first ten seconds of waking are bliss, being next to her children, before she realizes there’s a war and these are not her walls. She says it’s her “conscious choice as a mother” to stay in Poland.
The communal spirit is joyful, despite the circumstances. Kaja, Ganna, and her mother Nina make food for their family and visitors. They exchange packages with Grandfather Yarovenko, sending a parcel for his birthday, and receiving shoеs for warm weather. “We fled in February, in boots,” Nina says. She calls her husband, laughing while she tells him about a single sock they found with the shoes. “It’s a sign that we’ll come back for the other one.”
Kaja and Ganna make rag dolls together. “If you put a name or face on it, it will disturb the spirits of your ancestors,” Ganna says. They sell the nameless, faceless dolls at a festival, where Yaroslav’s folk band, Chorea Kozacky, plays.
Kaja and Ganna talk in the forest. Kaja describes the disbelief felt among Polish people at the onset of the war. After the first twenty-four hours, “our historical memory switched on”, she says, listing Polish uprisings against Russian rule. “Since Peter the Great, Russia, Muscovy, has been destroying Ukraine,” Ganna says. Together, they burn a doll made to look like Putin. “May the power of mothers be with us,” Ganna says.
Mama’s Voice screens at the New Jersey Film Festival on Sunday, February 8, 2026 – Online for 24 Hours beginning at midnight Eastern USA time on this day. Get more info and buy tickets here.
Also, on Sunday, February 8, 2026 between 6:00 - 6:30 pm there will be a FREE online Q&A Session for Mama’s Voice with the producers Larysa Iarovenko and Dmytro Konovalov. The conversation will be moderated by Yuri Shevchuk, Director of the Ukrainian Film Club at Columbia University. To register go here.
The 44th Bi-Annual New Jersey Film Festival will be taking place on select Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays between January 23-February 22, 2026. The Festival will be a hybrid one as we will be presenting it online as well as doing in-person screenings at Rutgers University. Most of the films will be available virtually via Video on Demand for 24 hours on their show date. VOD start times are at 12 Midnight Eastern USA. Each General Admission Ticket or Festival Pass purchased is good for both the virtual and the in-person when both are offered. The in-person screenings will be held in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ beginning at 5PM or 7PM on their show date. General Admission Ticket=$15 Per Program; Festival All Access Pass=$120; In-Person Only Student Ticket=$10 Per Program. For more info on the Film festival go here: FESTIVAL WEBSITE
