Briarcliff Entertainment has released the official trailer for Ash and Crayons, Evgeny Afineevsky's documentary about children growing up through the war in Ukraine. It opens in US theaters on November 20, 2026, which is World Children's Day.
The story
The film is a close portrait of childhood resilience. It follows seven Ukrainian children as they pursue their passions, support their families, build friendships and keep moving forward. They include survivors of missile strikes, children who lost parents, and children who were forcibly deported to Russia. Much of the footage was filmed at the Unbroken rehabilitation center in Lviv, and the documentary mixes that real footage with animation by Ukrainian artists.
Who's in it
Among the children are Roman Oleksiv, who was badly burned in a 2022 missile strike that killed his mother, and Yana Stepanenko, who lost both legs in a missile attack on the railway station in Kramatorsk. The film shows them rebuilding their lives through art, sports and friendship.
Behind the camera
Afineevsky, an Academy Award nominee, wrote and directed. Kevin Goetz and Galyna Sadomtseva-Nabaranchuk produced, with the Czech company PFX as co-producer, and more than 100 Ukrainian artists and film professionals worked on it. It has already been screened at the Vatican, the UK and Italian parliaments, the Council of Europe and the US Congress. It also won two awards at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival and was honored at the Cinema for Peace gala during the 2026 Berlin Film Festival.
Distributed in North America by Briarcliff Entertainment.