TO DANCE IS TO RESIST | BFI Flare 2026

I'm not quite sure where it came from, but I've always felt an affinity for Ukrainian culture, even before the war, which is an odd thing for a queer Brit to say. As the closing titles of TO DANCE IS TO RESIST remind us, Ukraine probably wouldn't be a particularly welcoming place for someone like me, not least because of the threat of Russian ordnance. And yet.

The high art performance world probably isn't for me either, but again, there's something so intriguing and admirable about it. This film is as much a fantastic showcase of the performances by the dance troupe – XXX – as it is a study of queer Ukrainians enduring despite hostility on multiple fronts.

Throughout, Julian Lautenbacher adeptly and elegantly blends all the glamour and the beauty of dance with the striking sounds and imagery of an active war – just as our dancers do in their performances. Just as Kyiv is divided by the Dnipro River, the hearts of so many queer people in Ukraine seem to be split in two.

And it's not lost on me that all the gorgeous drone footage from over the Dnipro evokes the way that many soldiers have died in this terrifyingly modern war. There are a few shots where the film's primary subjects, Jay and Vol'demar, look deeply into the camera, unblinking – they could be thousand-yard stares, but they're defiant, too. Though they're not soldiers, they have been and still are fighting.

By the film's end, we see a dance where Jay and Vol'demar are pulling and pushing each other, smearing some sort of oily mud on each other's skin. But there's tenderness there, too. Of course there is. It's the dance of a culture fighting to survive without ripping its own heart out.

I really loved this film, and I'd thoroughly recommend it to any queer who needs a reminder of how tough our people are. Slava Ukraini.