When Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, cinematographer Artem Ryzhykov is forced to make an irreversible choice. Leaving behind the life he knew as a filmmaker, he joins the army to defend his country. What begins as a response to an emergency becomes a years-long journey through the frontlines of war, where the boundary between witnessing history and being consumed by it disappears completely.
Shot over three and a half years in the combat zones of Ukraine, A Simple Soldier is both an intimate self-portrait and a frontline chronicle of a country fighting for survival. As Artem moves through ruined towns, trenches, forests, and shattered landscapes, he is transformed by the war he once might have filmed from behind the camera. Instead of framing other people’s lives, he now lives the reality of a soldier himself — carrying weapons, enduring exhaustion, fear, loss, absurd routine, and the constant presence of death.