A Rio Feminist Film Programming Group x Women’s History Month East London 2026 special!

My Dear Theo is an intimate and moving documentary by Ukrainian filmmaker Alisa Kovalenko, made in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Unable to continue making films in the conventional sense, Kovalenko instead creates video diaries and poetic letters addressed to a future grown-up Theo, that capture the devastating reality of war while reflecting on her choice to serve. It is a record of love, memory, and impossible choices in which she explains why she has left him behind to fight for their country. Conventionally seen as the right choice for men, this film explores what it means for a woman to leave her child in favour of her country and shows that the situation is far from straightforward.

The film weaves together tender home-movie footage of the family’s joyful life in the Donbas before the war with the stark reality of the present. Kovalenko, now serving as a commando in the same region where her family comes from, tells Theo that if she does not fight there may be no Ukrainian children living there in the future. On the front line, life oscillates between boredom and constant danger. The silence is threatening, memories feel like warm blankets, and every step risks hidden mines, while trenches become playgrounds for the few local children that remain.

As supplies dwindle, villages are destroyed and comrades are killed - Kovalenko confronts her deepest fear- have her sacrifices been worth it for a better future for her son?

The Rio Feminist Film Programming group is Sarah Chorley, Helen de Witt, Selina Robertson and Corrina Antrobus. Inspired by the passionate feminist programming work that took place at the Rio in the late 1970s and 1980s, we have reinstated feminist film screenings and events that link the Rio’s film feminist pasts with current feminist urgencies. All are welcome!