how to divorce during the war
How To Divorce During the War (2026)
Directed by Andrius Blazevicius
Andrius Blazevicius’ How To Divorce During the War details a couple’s impending divorce when framed in the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Set in Lithuania, the film begins the day before the war begins, when Marija (Žygimantė Elena Jakštaitė), an executive at an online publishing company, reluctantly goes through her workday, knowing the conversation she plans to have with her husband Vytas (Marius Repšys) later in the evening. Vytas is a stay-at-home father to their young daughter Dovile (Amelija Adomaityte) and independent filmmaker; he hasn’t produced a new work in a while. The two drive Dovile to her musical lessons, where Vytas and Marija argue in brutal fashion. Their relationship needs to end.
As the two separate, we learn that Marija is considering a relationship with one of her colleagues, a younger woman at the agency. Meanwhile, Vytas returns home to his parents, where his mother and father’s conservative politics cause tension. As Marija explores her sexuality, she houses a Ukrainian family, and eventually leaves the agency due to their refusal to end their relationship with their Russian cohorts. Both Marija and Vytas flounder in their own ways, attempting to participate in support of their Ukrainian comrades, while picking up the pieces of their lives. There’s a note of performative anxiety with their altruism, with both seemingly using their conviction to the Ukrainian cause as a distraction from their own lives. Dovile ends up struggling by her lonesome, getting into fights and relying on meds to get to sleep. Much of these sequences are captured with a sense of wry wit, but their frustrations rarely play out as anything more than comic errors. Blazevicius is serviceable (he won the Sundance Director’s Award) though this is more about tone management than any sort of broad or brave formal flourishes.
I think what I got most out of How To Divorce During the War is how ingrained we are with our own plights, to the point that our activism is often compromised because of the distraction we make of it; we’re so self-involved with our own issues, that we treat activism as a means of distraction to bolster our self-confidence. Both Marija and Vytas are guilty of this, while their daughter ends up being the most selfless of the three. She fights a classmate for their conservative views, while her father opts to confront his parents in comic fashion. Marija ends up shouting at her houseguests, incapable of understanding the trauma of displaced people.
I thought about my own relationships in the past, and of the schism that happened nearly eight years now. How at the time, I sought any and all distractions, whether it be with other women or through work, and how both of those things suffered because I was still ruminating over the loss. I never really let the pain consume me, and instead needed remedies to keep myself moving. This is how Blazevicius’ film leaves an impression: the world descends into chaos often and without warning. Our ability to help those in need is contingent on how selfless we can act. Some have that luxury, while others do not.