Mariupol siege diary of Kateryna Savenko to be heard at Venice Film Festival

The diary of Kateryna Savenko, a Mariupol resident who died during Russia’s siege of the city in 2022, will be heard as part of Ukrainian artist Sophia Bulgakova’s immersive installation “Spomyny” (“Memories”) at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.

The festival will take place on the island of Lido from Sept. 2–12, 2026. “Spomyny” was selected for the 10th edition of Venice Immersive, where it will be presented in the Best of Experiences — Out of Competition section. The program features 68 immersive works from 26 countries. 

For the festival presentation, Savenko’s diary was added to the installation in an audio version voiced by Ukrainian actress Dariya Tvoronovych. 

“Spomyny” brings together personal and collective testimonies from the years of Russia’s full-scale invasion in the form of sound artifacts collected by Bulgakova. Visitors listen to individual audio channels through pipes, gradually creating a nonlinear narrative from the artist’s personal experiences, conversations and testimonies from Ukraine, and recordings from social media and news reports. Savenko’s voice, preserved through her Mariupol diary, has now become part of this narrative. 

Savenko was 42 and lived in Mariupol. She began keeping her diary on Feb. 24, 2022, the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, documenting life in the city and her family’s struggle to survive the Russian siege.

Her 34 entries, written in two notebooks, recorded air raid alerts, searches for food and water, fear for loved ones, news of deaths, and moments of everyday life amid the siege.

On March 29, 2022, Savenko was seriously wounded in shelling that killed her husband, Vitalii. With her uninjured hand, she left a message asking for her diary to be saved so that the world could learn what had happened in Mariupol. She later escaped a fire at the hospital where she was being treated but died on April 4, 2022. 

Savenko’s family preserved her writings and later transferred them to the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. Her diary subsequently became the basis for a book.

As reported earlier, wartime diaries have become important documentary records of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Ukrainian writer Volodymyr Vakulenko kept a diary during the Russian occupation of Kharkiv Oblast and buried it at his parents’ home, knowing that Russian forces would come for him. Writer and war crimes researcher Victoria Amelina later recovered the diary and transferred it to the Kharkiv Literary Museum. 

The diary was presented at the Kyiv Book Arsenal in 2023. Amelina described it as testimony to Russian crimes and expressed hope that the book would be translated into multiple languages. Vakulenko was abducted and killed by Russian occupying forces in 2022. 

As reported earlier, Venice has also become a space for commemorating Ukrainian cultural figures killed by Russia. The “Invisible Pavilion,” an unofficial public art initiative running alongside the 61st Venice Biennale, placed posters across the city announcing exhibitions, readings, screenings, and other events that will never take place because their Ukrainian participants were killed by Russia. Each was marked “Cancelled” with the explanation: “Because the author was killed by Russia.”

Photo: provided to Chytomo by the organizers