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ETCHED IN MEMORY

From Crimea to Kyiv: A Crimean Tatar Family’s Fight to Save Their People

a film by Christina Paschyn

ABOUT THE FILM

As Russian missiles rain down on Kyiv, Zarema and Eskender Bariiev risk everything to fight for their occupied homeland, Crimea, while protecting their children and fellow Crimean Tatars living in exile—a rare look into the war through the eyes of Ukraine’s Indigenous Muslim community, voices too often left unheard.

Etched in Memory follows Crimean Tatar activists Zarema and Eskender Bariiev as they raise three children under missile fire in war-scarred Kyiv—while also fighting to liberate their occupied homeland, Crimea. Between air raids, they campaign to free political prisoners like Nariman Dzhelyal and lead efforts to rescue abducted museum director Leila Ibrahimova. They also stand beside fellow refugees: Rustem, seeking justice for his teenage son killed in a strike, and Elena, mourning her fallen soldier husband.

But as global attention shifts and Western politicians threaten the unthinkable—recognizing Crimea as Russian—a haunting question remains. Will the Crimean Tatars succeed in reclaiming their homeland, or will the world decide their fate without them?

Christina Paschyn is a Ukrainian American journalist and filmmaker. Etched in Memory is her debut feature documentary.

Her award-winning short documentary, A Struggle for Home: The Crimean Tatars (2015), won nine awards, including Best International Film at the DC Independent Film Festival. The film screened at the European Parliament in Brussels and the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., and was broadcast by Al Jazeera Documentary and Axess TV. It is available on Amazon Prime Video.

Christina earned a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and an MFA in Film from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is an assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern University in Qatar.

MEET THE DIRECTOR

THE TEAM

PRODUCERS
Christina Paschyn – Paschyn Productions
Rustem Muratov – 2Frames Production

EDITOR
Sasha Friedlander

DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY – KYIV
Denys Krasylníkov
Yunus Seytablaev

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY – TURKEY
Mare Caravadjio

SOUND RECORDER – KYIV
Artem Balan

SOUND RECORDER – TURKEY
Zafer Yilmaz

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

As a Ukrainian American filmmaker, this film is both personal and political—an effort to document a community whose history of displacement is unfolding again in real time.

Etched in Memory is my contribution to my ancestral homeland, Ukraine, and its never-ending resistance to the colonial, imperialist power next door. It is also my tribute to the Indigenous Crimean Tatar people, whose history and culture I’ve long admired and whose erasure I refuse to accept.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, I thought of my grandparents, who fled their beloved country because of Soviet persecution more than half a century earlier. But even more, I thought of Zarema Bariieva, my former fixer turned close friend, who refused to run again.

Zarema and her husband, Eskender, carry the memory of genocide. Raised on the harrowing tales of Stalin’s brutal deportation of their people in 1944, they then witnessed it for themselves when Putin’s invasion and annexation of the peninsula forced them to flee in 2014. They had believed their departure would be temporary.

In 2022, they knew not to make that mistake again.

The Bariievs chose to stay in Kyiv to keep fighting for Crimea’s liberation from Russian occupation, even with their three kids beside them. That act of courage moved me deeply, and I could not help but pick up my camera to capture it.

But instead of focusing on the frontlines or the visual horrors of war, I chose to foreground the more subtle daily realities: the fear of history repeating, the fortitude of continuing to work and raise children as missiles fall, and an Indigenous peoples’—and their home nation’s—enduring defiance of surrender.

In documenting the Bariievs, I am creating space for voices that Western media and cinema have long ignored. This is not just a film about war. It’s a film about the urgency of etching into our memories a cycle of violence so it may finally be brought to an end.

It is also a family story. A love story. A story about how people stay true to their convictions, even as the world tries to destroy them. And how, even during war, life carries on.

I can only hope that my film will serve to remind audiences that no matter what happens to Crimea or how the war might end, the Crimean Tatars have the most to lose. Their voices must not be ignored or forgotten.