— Special Mention of DOCU/UKRAINE Competition, Docudays UA International Documentary Human Rights Film Festival, 2025

— Official Selection, The Hague Movies that Matter Festival, 2025

— Official Selection, CPH:DOX (Copenhagen International Documentary Festival), 2025

February 2022. Ukrainian filmmaker Alisa Kovalenko resolves to fulfil a promise she made to herself: to volunteer in the Ukrainian Armed Forces if the Russian invasion of her country escalates to full scale. Leaving behind her 5-year-old son, Théo, she goes to fight on the frontline.

This film, which was never meant to exist, was born from the effort to preserve – amidst the horrors and dangers of war – evidence of a mother’s unwavering love for her child. Through intimate video diaries and poetic letters addressed to a future, grown-up Théo, Alisa captures the devastating reality of war while reflecting on her choice to serve.

Watching My Dear Theo is humbling. As a Danish film critic (and a mother) I met Alisa in the documentary, not as a distant subject, but as a woman standing right beside me. I felt the distance between us collapse. My dear Theo is a heartbreaking testimony of all the secondary casualties of war: families torn apart, birthdays missed, love stretched from the front line all the way to safety hundreds of kilometres away.

Especially one sentence in the film will stay with me forever. When Alisa says: - There's so much love Theo will miss if I’m not here. The words made me think of how much love the world has missed out on because of war. How much disappears with every life lost. My Dear Theo is a tender record of ordinary life under extraordinary pressure and it will probably break your heart as it did mine.

— Maria Månson