When war cancels movie screenings

How I went to see Poor Things and couldn’t

Anton Kutselyk
4 min readJan 25, 2024

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This is my drawing.

I woke up at 9:30. I didn’t have time for breakfast. I barely had enough time for a shower. At 11:30, my friend and I agreed to see Poor Things in one of Kyiv’s shopping malls. It’s one hour to get there. The movie goes on for two and a half hours. One hour to get back. It’s almost a full working day errand so I took a day off. I dedicated the day to just that: going to a cinema with a friend.

I arrived at the cinema theatre earlier than my friend. It turned out later that he was waiting for me at a metro station because that’s where we agreed to meet. It was a hectic morning. I was unfocused. I felt stupid. I had to wait for him now to hurry up and get to me before the movie started.

While waiting, I bought cheesy puffed potatoes and popcorn with a weird taste: mulled wine and cinnamon. Both tasted good. Soon, my friend came. We hugged. We approached the third viewing hall. He showed our tickets to the ticket lady. The hall was dark; movie trailers were already playing. We found our seats. It was comfy. The spark of excitement started growing in me. Poor Things is probably the only movie from last year that I’d been genuinely waiting to see.

Yes, here I finally was, sitting with a person I like being around, diving my hand in a tasty…

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Anton Kutselyk

I'm a law graduate living in Kyiv and writing about local culture, life, war and signs of inevitable peace.