This book is a laudable attempt at examining Ukraine’s and Russia’s paths after the collapse of the USSR and their dueling cinematic treatments. The Introduction expresses the core idea: “The past tends to be produced in the present; it is updated according to present ideologies” (xvii). This is the book’s throughline. Each of five chapters includes a brief historical and political excursus, a look at both states’ past and present ideology and cultural memory, and a detailed survey of films. Shlikhar consistently cites many sources, including studies on history, cultural memory, trauma, film reviews, interviews, and political speeches. Each chapter deals with a distinct, contested narrative vector, and despite some questionable framing, the book’s organization is logical.

The Kremlin has long attempted to appropriate the Kyivan Rusʹ and Prince Volodymyr as its own in support of the fiction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. This narrative is the focus of the first chapter, which compares the states’ politics and ideologies, tracing the evolution of the image of Prince Volodymyr since imperial times. Films like The Viking (dir. Andrei Kravchuk, 2016, Russia) and Prince Volodymyr: Between Memory and Praise (dir. Volodymyr Densenko, 2022, Ukraine) propose categorically diverging historical interpretations. For Russia, Vladimir is “a cultural relic … pulled out of storage” (14) for appropriation and legitimization of the rhetoric that resulted in the invasion of Ukraine. For Ukraine, Volodymyr is someone who provided connection with the west. Somewhat jarringly, the chapter opens with Vladimir Putin’s July 2021 column claiming that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, instantly putting the Ukrainian position on the defensive; something that could have been avoided if it were mentioned after the discussion of the Kyivan Rusʹ (5–6).

Cossack history is also complex and contradictory, and the second chapter challenges the reader to comprehend the far and near past of Ukrainian/Zaporizhzhian and Russian/Kuban Cossacks, hetmans Bohdan Khmelʹnytsʹkyi and Ivan Mazepa, and their clashing representations. The author also discusses two versions of Nikolai Gogolʹ’s Taras Bulba (1835/1842), A Song about Taras Bulba (dir. Petro Pinchuk, 2009, Ukraine) and Taras Bulʹba (dir. Vladimir Bortko, 2009, Russia). Shlikhar rightly concludes that Bortko’s film, based on the later version of Gogolʹ’s novella, written “under the pressure of imperial authorities” (52), was an “appropriation of Cossack memory and an insult to Ukrainian national identity” (59). This chapter’s cinematic analysis provides important insights into the depiction of historical or literary characters.

The Great Patriotic War cult has always fueled Russian (and Soviet) propaganda. The third chapter surveys this topic, examining Russian films that distort the image of Ukrainians and their participation in the war. Simultaneously, exploring Ukrainian films about WWII, the author grapples with controversial issues regarding the Ukrainian resistance. Two films, however, do not relate to the Ukrainian topic whatsoever, which seems illogical, given the book’s purpose. Shlikhar connects the cult with the current war: “the cult of the war has served as the central justification for Putin’s war against Ukraine” (75). This contradicts the Introduction, which accurately points out that Russia always considered Ukraine “its own” and that Ukraine’s movement towards independence and Europe was what led to the current war (xv). Similarly, Ch. 2 concludes that “opposite visions of the past eventually led to a revisionist interpretation of Ukrainian history and provided grounds for the Russian invasion of Ukraine” (74).

The book is at its best when Shlikhar leaves the safe zone of citation and conducts formal analysis of Ukrainian films, asserting her own opinion. In Ch. 4, “The Soviet Past: Trauma vs. Nostalgia,” “Trauma” includes a passionate analysis of Oles Yanchuk’s Famine-33 (1991) and other Ukrainian films on the painful topics of the Holodomor and the deportation of Crimean Tatars. “Nostalgia,” meanwhile, reflects on the Soviet past in present Russia. The concluding chapter emotionally but objectively discusses a number of Ukrainian films about the current war, national identity, and resilience, considering a revival of Ukrainian cinema that “grew more truthful and real” in opposition to the degeneration of Russia’s cinematic industry—“more mythic and hyperreal” (167).

Despite the book’s strengths, there are some questionable moments. One is the choice of images for the front cover, which features Taras and The Viking’s Vladimir: two characters whose identities were warped by Russian filmmakers in support of the Kremlin’s narratives. It would have been more logical to show characters from the parallel worlds the book explores. Though the book would benefit from a stronger authorial stance, it is an indisputably timely study with much valuable information, and it raises crucial issues, fostering interest in further studies, altogether a sign of success.