OLHA BIRZUL, VIKTOR ONYSKO, ZHENIA OLIINYK
Film editor Viktor Onysko joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine to fight in the war against Russia at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Zhenia Oliinyk learned of his death in December 2022 from a heart-breaking public post by his wife Olha Birzul and attended the funeral. A few months later, Olha wrote to Zhenia with a proposal to turn her messenger chats with Viktor into a graphic novel—chats from the time when he had been fighting in Kherson region and the East, while Olha and their daughter Zakhariia had been evacuated to Vienna.
This correspondence is a continuous exercise in finding and maintaining a connection between two worlds, a dimension nourished by shared memories and filled with love. Olha and Zhenia, who was also a military partner until 2022 and remains one today, chose a line as a metaphor for this connection—the simplest graphic unit that reproduces the passage of time, the layering of memory and the growth of tension. The text fragments in the book underwent minimal interference—only everyday details and profanities were reduced.
Three and a half years after Viktor’s death, military servicemen and servicewomen are still heroes, yet still without clear terms of service. Pathos and glorification make it convenient to avoid the pressing problems of servicemen, servicewomen and their families, while the policy of remembrance regarding the fallen remains disordered and sometimes insensitive. And When You Say… is an attempt to prevent the war from swallowing the identity of the man who was a company commander, but also a filmmaker, a music lover, a motocross rider, a father, a friend. This is the least we can do to express our gratitude to him.
The exhibition features a part of the book that is to be published by UA Comix Publishing this year.
Olha Birzul is a film curator, film education promoter and coordinator of cultural diplomacy projects. She worked for the Docudays UA program department and headed the film department at the Ukrainian Institute. In 2024, she wrote Your Book about Cinema, a nonfiction book for teenagers about the bright and dark sides of the film industry, which she dedicated to the memory of her husband, Viktor Onysko. For this book, she received the National Film Critics Award Kinokolo and the BaraBooka Award for the Best Educational Book of the Year.
Viktor Onysko is a film editor and military serviceman. In March 2022, Viktor voluntarily joined the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and fought in Kherson and Donetsk regions as part of the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade. He was killed on December 30, 2022 near Soledar. Viktor created more than 20 films, including Cherkasy, Viddana, The Rising Hawk, The Stronghold, The Editorial Office and Fragments of Ice. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, III Class, and the Order of Merit, III Class.
Zhenia Oliinyk is an illustrator and comic book artist. Her works explore the themes of war, trauma, culture, media and human rights. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, she has been documenting her experience of living through war in the comics which were published in The New Yorker and The New York Times.