"Human.STUS" is a short animated movie about Ukrainian poet and human-rights fighter Vasyl Stus. It took me 4 months and over 4000 frames to finish it. And now — you're here.
The Soviet Union executed more than 100,000 people in Bykivnia.
Mountains of bodies rotted in that forest for years, and no one knew about the crime.
Ukrainian intellectuals and artists were constantly persecuted and murdered.
Ivan Svitlychnyi, known as the soul of every company, stood before an unjust court.
Alla Horska, a stained-glass artist, was killed by a blunt blow to the head.
Vasyl Symonenko, a poet and journalist who exposed the crime in Bykivnia, was beaten to death — his kidneys crushed with batons.
And Stus — who could not stay silent.
He endured punitive psychiatry — the so-called “mental hospitals” where people inconvenient to the system were tortured.
He went through beatings in solitary confinement and years of separation from his family.
It was done by Russia.
Russia tortured generations of Ukrainians to death in terrible agony.
And it continues to do so even now.
Right now, Ukrainian soldiers are being tortured in Russian captivity.
Russians have kidnapped hundreds of thousands of people — more than 20,000 of them are children.
But even in the hardest conditions, Stus wrote to his family to remain kind — to everyone, and to everything.
To be a candle in the darkness.
And to be brave.
Because the world needs brave people.
And kind ones.
Like Stus.
