Balmy Ukraine
In the spring of 2025, we embarked on new adventures in partnership with Balmy Army—a movement of young people, artists, activists, and radical dreamers in England, fighting for mental health support that actually works.
Launched in 2022, Balmy Army brings together young people, madpride organizers, disability justice advocates, and anyone trying to cope in a broken system. What do they want? Mental health support that truly helps. When do they want it? About 15 years ago…
Whether you’re struggling with mental health, supporting someone who is, working in the field, or just curious, Balmy Army reminds us that mental health isn’t just about individuals—it’s about community, care, and creativity as powerful tools for healing.
Balmy Ukraine brought together five Ukrainian artists to learn methods of supporting mental health and mentored ten teens in creating documentary films about their lives today. Our goal was to amplify the voices of young people, helping them share their reality through film, text, and other creative media—processing both the upheaval of war and the everyday challenges of being young.
The project began offline in Lviv from March 21–29 and continued online through the end of June. Teens captured their daily life, surroundings, and personal experiences through video while also working on written reflections exploring mental health topics, such as “What is it like to be you?” or “What helps you stay grounded?”
Daria, Hanna, Kira, Olexa, Rost, Sasha, Vlada, Vlada, Vesna and Zakhar are ten teenagers who like Radiohead, making art, swimming, dating, watching films and hanging out with their friends. They also live close to the front line.
For three months, they wrote, sang, danced, hugged, laughed, cried, and met regularly to share their stories. They were supported by Ukrainian and British artists, psychologists, and producers, including James Leadbitter, Jenna Omelchenko, Anastasia Kosodii, Maria Felenko, Kateryna Kroha, Andrii Ptitsyn, and Oksana Chyzh.
The result is a poetic, mosaic-like film showing life near the front line through the eyes of teens: unfiltered, ordinary, yet extraordinary. It’s about finding oneself, belonging, love and anger, and striving to live despite constant danger.
The world premiere of “This is also Ukraine” took place in July 2025 at the Manchester International Festival (MIF25) in the UK. In August, the film was screened in Lviv, followed by its Ukrainian premiere in September at the Kyiv International Short Film Festival.
The film was also presented in Kharkiv at ART Area DK, at King’s College London, at Birkbeck, University of London as part of Ukraine Culture Week, and at the Margate Film Festival in the UK.
Team
James Leadbitter aka the vacuum cleaner is the name of a UK based artist and activist who makes candid, provocative and playful work.
His work combines madpride and disability justice organising, direct action and deep ecology, but always with a lightness and silliness.
Over the last 12 years he has focused on design of mad spaces, organising and crip aesthetics. Often working with large groups including young people, health professionals and different communities, his art and activism aims to challenge and change how mental health is understood, treated and experienced.
With roots in activism and radical art, the vacuum cleaner has created one-man interventions and large-scale actions as well as performance, installation and film.
His work has been shown in galleries, theatres, hospitals and schools and has appeared on streets, within social movements and in public spaces internationally.
Jenna Omeltschenko has worked in the arts sector for over 19 years and is currently the Creative Engagement Director at Sheffield Theatres.
Previously Jenna was the Head of National Partnerships at the National Theatre leading on national programmes for schools and young people, producing new work for teenagers touring into schools across the country and managing the audience development strategy as part of the Theatre Nations Partnerships project.
Jenna also developed the National Theatre’s new Speak Up programme, a three-year £3.3m funded co-creation project working with young people in areas of the country that have been affected by industrial decline and over a decade of austerity.
Jenna is of Eastern European and Irish heritage but is Manchester born and bred and her working-class upbringing informs both her politics and her work ensuring that young people and communities across the country can lead creative lives within their villages, town and cities.
Anna Burdina is a producer, cultural manager, and CEO of The Independent Cultural Initiatives (Ukraine), an NGO dedicated to developing international cultural relations and supporting social and educational initiatives for young people.
Since 2018, The Independent Cultural Initiatives has brought together professionals in film, media, and education, working closely with embassies, cultural institutions, and the Ukrainian film industry.
The organization continues to foster cultural diplomacy, support Ukrainian filmmakers, and strengthen international partnerships through film and education, even during wartime.
Anastasiia Kosodii is a playwright, screenwriter, and theatre director, as well as one of the co-founders of the Theatre of Playwrights in Kyiv.
Before the full-scale invasion, Anastasiia frequently collaborated with civil society organizations in frontline towns in eastern Ukraine. Internationally, she has worked with Maxim Gorki Theater (Berlin), Münchner Kammerspiele, and the National Theater Mannheim.
One of her recent works is the play Playlist of a Wayfarer, currently part of the repertoire at the Lesia Ukrainka Drama Theater in Lviv.
Maria Felenko is a film director, screenwriter, and producer.
A graduate of the Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television (Karpenko-Kary) and a participant in the student mobility program at FAMU (Czech Republic, 2022–2025). Maria’s short films have been featured in the competition programs of both Ukrainian and international film festivals, including Palm Springs International ShortFest, EnergaCamerimage, MykolaichukOPEN, and Linz IFF.
In 2023, she took part in the Warsaw Next program at the Warsaw International Film Festival and the Sommerfilmakademie.
Andrii Ptitsyn is a director, dancer, cultural studies scholar.
As a performer and member of Apache Crew, Andrii has appeared in music videos for THE WEEKND, Ed Sheeran, Kalush, and others. He is the director of the short film Today I’m Gonna Dance, the video essay Oh, Ms Inno, and the music video Love, Mary for the single Mezha.
Oksana Chyzh is a documentary filmmaker, screenwriter, and editor.
She has worked on documentary projects about a youth orchestra, war correspondents, a national music competition held in a metro station, and the opening of a fast-food restaurant in Kyiv during wartime. Currently, she is developing a film about child runners in Cambodia who are growing up in an orphanage.
Oksana is interested in exploring human relationships, identity crises, and social challenges. She enjoys experimenting with format and shooting approaches, and she’s drawn to films that blur the line between fiction and documentary — “the kind where the audience is never quite sure what’s real.”
Kateryna Kroha is a filmmaker and visual artist working at the intersection of non-fiction cinema, video art, and text, exploring themes of memory and home.
She studied sociology and literature, bringing a research-driven approach to her artistic practice. Kateryna often uses minimal technical tools — including toy cameras — to experiment with form and perspective.
During a trip to a war zone, she shot the documentary How I Celebrated Russian Language Day in Kherson, which was screened in Ukraine, Europe, and the United States. One of her key projects is Mosaic, a work that began as a game and evolved into an artistic practice. For Kateryna, art is a conversation — a way to trace actions that never quite happened.
Rayan Capozzi is an educator, artist, and psychotherapist (MSc, University of Aberdeen, UK). For over three years, he has offered free therapy in person-centred, existential, and narrative exposure modalities across Ukraine, Lebanon, and Kurdistan (Iraq).
Through his mutual-aid initiative Solidarity Minded, Rayan also facilitates free educational and creative workshops with international partners.
Rayan has extensive experience working with youth. During the war in Lebanon, he supported displaced children and teens in shelters, and in 2023, worked with young Syrian refugees as a therapist and teacher. Previous years include roles at youth camps in Poland and Romania, and refugee community centres in Denmark and Serbia.
In 2024, he volunteered at Terykon in Donetsk region, leading trauma-informed workshops for teenagers, and later served as a camp and mental health counsellor at Zgraya camp in Chernivtsi.
Balmy Ukraine is part of the Balmy Army project, initiated by the vacuum cleaner, and was carried out in partnership with the NGO Independent Cultural Initiatives and Art Therapy Force, with support from British Council Ukraine.
Might be interesting:
