English Lesson

The film “English Lesson” consists of 6-7 stories told by Ukrainian children during an online lesson, all united by the war theme. The animated film, capturing the feelings and experiences of children with various backgrounds, will tell broad audiences what it’s like to be a child during a war.

The online English lesson is ongoing. There are 7 windows in Zoom, including a teacher and 6 children of different genders and ages. Everyone has their cameras on, allowing the teacher to see the children’s faces and the background in their rooms. The teacher starts the lesson. She announces in English the topic of the current lesson: “My city/village.” The topic confuses pupils since they don’t know if they should describe the places where they were born and spent their childhood or the ones where they are living right now. These places differ almost for everybody as the children in the online lesson are Ukrainians suffering from the Russian full-scale war in their country, resulting in losing homes and adapting to a new life elsewhere. Together with the teacher, pupils decide to describe their hometowns, which makes them go through different emotions.

Keywords: based on a true story, children