By Olha Chepil | 2026-06-26

The lights came up in a Kyiv auditorium, and nobody moved. The audience had just watched "The Fatigued," and the silence held people in their seats, as if returning to ordinary life could wait a little longer. The actors filed onstage one by one. The last to reach it climbed up on crutches, balanced on two prostheses, and spoke first.

"This connection with the public is very important to me," Oleh Symoroz said.

Symoroz once fought a different battle. Before Russia's full-scale invasion, he was known in Kyiv as an activist defending green spaces from developers. After 2022 he went to war in eastern Ukraine. An antitank mine exploded under him near the Serebryansky Forest in Luhansk Region, and he lost both legs. Now he stands in front of cameras and crowds, showing a version of the wounded soldier that Ukraine rarely lets itself see.

After the mine, on-screen

"The Fatigued" is Symoroz's second appearance in a major film. He earlier acted in the TV series "Return," playing a veteran who was a double amputee. But this film broke new ground. It gave a veteran with hard combat experience a leading role rather than casting him as a symbol of war. Symoroz plays Dima, a seriously wounded soldier learning to live with his trauma. The part mirrors his own life.

He told the audience why these roles matter to him. A seriously wounded veteran is far more than a cheerful figure cracking jokes about his legs on Twitter, he said.

"This is actually a very hard phase. It's physically hard, but it's even harder morally and psychologically," Symoroz said.

Ukrainians have grown used to the comfortable side of rehabilitation, he said — motivational videos, sports, stories of overcoming. That image hides depression, isolation and a long road back to ordinary life.

"It would be nice to keep the tone of the conversation mature, not just filled with jokes," he said. "Although soldiers probably joke better than anyone."

The view from inside

Volodymyr Mula, a Ukrainian director and producer and the first Ukrainian to win an Emmy Award, said war has pushed the country's cinema to change fast.

"Documentary filmmaking has become much more serious, deeper and more meaningful. Directors have begun to look more in that direction, and that is about the development," Mula told Kontur.

When he filmed service members for his sports documentary "The Interception Game," none turned him down. Being on camera felt unnatural to them, he said, yet they helped him and wanted to connect. He sensed their need for socialization and their wish to feel useful to civilian society, not only to the army.

The film follows brothers Mykola and Serhii Mykhailenko. Mykola plays football for Dynamo Kyiv and Ukraine's national Olympic team. Serhii commands a mobile air defense group and hunts Russian drones by night. One brother steps onto the Olympic field; the other holds the battlefield.

Mula spent long stretches near the front, filming ordinary conversations.

"The Ukrainian army has multifaceted, interesting, educated, sophisticated people. That really shows the level of the Ukrainians who today are on the front," he said.

He framed this on-screen presence as part of a broader social adjustment.

"Service members watch and realize that they're not alone because there are going to be more and more people like them. It's crucial to make them feel that they have a path back to a social life," Mula said.

Not a bronzed hero

Symoroz works in auteur cinema. The veteran Oleksandr Budko, call sign Teren, shows how former soldiers are entering popular culture. After losing his legs, he spoke publicly about rehabilitation. But starring in the Ukrainian version of "The Bachelor" made him a household name. He became the first veteran with amputations to play the show's romantic lead.

Olha Pohrebniak, a psychologist who works with service members, explained this exposure as overcompensation. The shift goes beyond moving attention from amputated limbs to creative success, she said.

"It's as if amputation provides an opportunity to grow more, not just to return to zero but to enter positive territory," Pohrebniak told Kontur.

A person's character before the war shapes what follows, she said.

"If someone was active, creative and self-confident, even after they experience major trauma they'll continue to be an example for others," she said. "It's the story of Viktor Frankl: despite experiencing the concentration camps and horrors, he remained a complete person with an inner core that could not be broken."

Theater is shifting too. Yevhen Avdeenko, an Honored Artist of Ukraine, went to the front after the invasion, served in several places, and returned to the stage while still in uniform. He now stars in "Everything Will Be Okay, Just Not Right Away." The 3rd Separate Assault Brigade created the show, which tells true stories of soldiers and their conversations with civilians.

Pohrebniak sees a wider cultural turn.

"We're now seeing a new phenomenon. The theme of the war has become part of our everyday reality. This means that we're seeing a new cinema, new theater, new books, a new cultural stratum that is trying to explain what is happening to people," she said.

The Ukrainian hero on-screen no longer resembles a bronzed figure on a poster. He walks on prostheses, carries open wounds and tries to fit back into civilian life. He is becoming the new face of Ukrainian culture, and Pohrebniak said this is no accident.

"Art is a unique language. Through it we live not just the physical experience of war but also the spiritual one," she said.