Fantasia International Film Festival 2023 – Stay Online is no easy watch. Set days and weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it very much shows the human costs of war. While screen thrillers aren’t new, we haven’t quite seen a movie like this before that gives voice to the Ukrainian people following Russia’s invasion. This is a gripping, tense, emotionally wrought thriller.

Directed by Eva Strelnikova, the film stars Elizaveta Zaitseva as Katya. She volunteers with Ukraine’s Territorial Defenses to help locate other Ukrainians. Because of this, she has access to another Ukrainian civilian’s laptop, donated to the country’s defenses. The laptop belongs to Andriy (Roman Liakh). Katya soon discovers he’s a father, and through Andriy’s laptop files and social media accounts, she connects with his son, Sava (Hordii Dziubynski), an absolutely adorable boy obsessed with superheroes, specifically Spiderman. Katya tells him she’s a superhero and will help him find his parents. As she puts it at one point, she wants him to still believe in superheroes.

Because of Katya’s steely determination to help Salva, even as air raid sirens go off and bombs rattle her apartment, it endangers her family. She eventually encourages her Uncle Tolik (Oleksandr Yarema) and brother Vitya (Oleksandr Rudynskyy) to find the wounded Andriy, who hidesin a basement in Busha, one of the first villages Russia occupied and the scene of some of the war’s most gruesome fatalities, discovered after Ukraine eventually liberated the area. Zaitseva especially gives a harrowing performance, bringing the audience along for an emotionally difficult and challenging journey.

Strelnikova and co-writer Anton Skrypets really humanize the characters. You get to know these Ukrainians through images, video calls, and message history. You come to understand their lives, thus raising the stakes. There are a lot of fatalities here, and when they hit, they feel devastating because this film takes its time with character development. One especially moving moment includes a video from Christmas, just a few months before the war. Vitya sends this to Katya and their mom (Olesia Zhurakivska). In it, they make wishes for the new year, without realizing what horrors would befall the country early into a new year.

These very human moments are juxtaposed with the brutality of warfare, be it air raid sirens, gunfire, or a desperate mother, wanting both of her kids to just call her and go somewhere safer. There’s even a scene in which a Russian mother pleads with her son to not kill any Ukrainians. These human moments are contrasted with violent imagery from the get-go. The film opens with brief sequences of Ukrainians laughing and celebrating life. This is spliced with breaking news about the war and images that have become all too familiar 500 some days after the invasion started, including fatalities and Ukrainians fleeing their homes.

Stay Online truly underscores the human costs of war. It’s a powerful and gut-wrenching film that uses screen time to tell the stories of Ukrainians simply trying to survive and help each other make it to the next day. The strong character development elevates this thriller. We’ve not yet seen a screen-type film like this yet, using the medium to show the abject terror of war.

7.5 Out of 10