The Wars We Play
documentary, 90 min
Ukrainian, Portuguese
logline
As Brazilian footballers join a Ukrainian team, their arrival sidelines local players – some of whom face conscription. With war creeping ever closer, football becomes a mirror of a nation torn apart.
synopsis
Like many Brazilian boys from poor backgrounds, 18-year-old Alisson always dreamed of becoming a professional footballer. But he could never have imagined that his talent as a centre forward would one day lead him into one of the largest armed conflicts of the 21st century. He is one of many Brazilians recruited over the past two decades by FC Shakhtar Donetsk – a transfer strategy that helped the underdog club from the Donbas win the UEFA Cup in 2009. Yet despite its name, Shakhtar no longer plays in Donetsk. Since 2014, it has been a team on the run, its lineup long dominated by Brazilian players.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, the international players fled in haste. In the aftermath, the club was forced to field an all-Ukrainian squad. What began as an emergency measure soon became a political statement: football as a symbol of national resistance.
Four years into the war, a sense of fatigue spreads across Ukraine and abroad: fatigue with images, with the endless state of emergency. Many long for a return to normalcy. But what does “normal” mean in a country fighting for survival?
As Alisson and other Brazilians return to Shakhtar, their arrival is met with suspicion. For the Ukrainian teammates, much more than a starting position is at stake: losing a squad place can mean being drafted into military service. Meanwhile, veterans from the front are joining Shakhtar’s new amputee team, Shakhtar Stalevi (“of steel”).
The Wars We Play follows two players who embody opposing sides of football: a young Brazilian who sees the game as career and escape, and a Ukrainian veteran for whom it means community and healing. Their paths collide within the same club: one training in a five-star resort near Lviv, shielded from war; the other in Kyiv, carrying the war in his body.
The new film by Anton Yaremchuk & João Pedro Prado (Fission, CPH:DOX 2025) views war through the lens of football – where every goal becomes a spark of resilience in a nation under siege.
directors’ statement
Dortmund, 2025. A decisive Champions League match. The score: 3–1 for BVB. When Shakhtar Donetsk return from the locker room, the reality is plain to see. Exhausted and outmatched, they face a roaring sea of yellow and black. Their European dream seems over, and yet they must keep playing, as if a comeback were possible. Surrender is not an option.
In that moment, the parallels between pitch and battlefield became clear to us. Football and war, two male-dominated worlds sharing the same language of attack and defence, of gaining and losing ground. In both, capitulation is unthinkable.
Nowhere is this connection more tangible than in Ukraine, where football and war no longer coexist but directly intersect. At the centre stands FC Shakhtar Donetsk.
The Wars We Play is a multilayered portrait of today’s Ukraine, told through those who shape this club. Between the Ukrainian amputee, for whom each match is an act of reclaiming life, and the Brazilian newcomer, trying to find his footing amid conflict, a central question emerges: how does national identity form and transform under the conditions of war?
Exiled from the Donbas since 2014, Shakhtar has become a travelling symbol of endurance and a mirror of deeper social contradictions. Some Ukrainians risk everything at the front; others try to maintain normalcy; some flee; a few profit. And now, foreign players arrive, unintentionally representing a nation fighting for survival.
Can a shared jersey bridge those men the sport has shielded from war and those who found it because of it? What is belonging based on – language, shared sacrifice, solidarity? Can one rebuild a country without a common language or shared experience?
As Ukraine resists an empire seeking to erase its identity, it must also reconcile its own fractures. To tell this war through football is to tread an untrodden path. As a Brazilian–Ukrainian duo, our perspective allows us to enter both sides of Shakhtar’s locker room, right into the heart of the team.
directed by João Pedro Prado, Anton Yaremchuk
production company: Carousel Film
producers: Vincent Edusei, Maritza Grass
cinematography: Anton Yaremchuk
editing: Amélie Richter