On the threshold of a new life we are faced with what we have left behind. Even when we think we have already moved on.

Ukraine, 2021. 22-year-old Vitaly studies German, dreaming of escaping a country where he no longer feels at home and starting a new life in Germany. A year before Russia’s full-scale invasion, he leaves for Munich, leaving behind his mother, a teacher shaped by the Soviet era, and his sister, who is deeply worried about her girlfriend working as a journalist on the eastern front.

In Munich, Vitaly begins to build a new life and joins a student theatre group, where, for the first time, he feels free to be himself. When war breaks out, his mother and sister are forced to flee Ukraine and seek refuge with him in Munich, confronting Vitaly’s new identity and bringing forth feelings that distance from the war cannot silence.

“Camouflage” had its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival’s Giornate degli Autori section where it received a nomination for the Queer Lion Award.