Daria Pankeeva’s 3D animated short film is a heart-wrenching tribute to a place lost in time that is the site of collective memories and experiences. The film navigates the Stavropol-on-Volga’s flooding with a poignant emotional weight, giving a personal insight into the human cost of relocation, an issue that has, and continues to be, a worldwide socio-political concern. With the use of detailed craftsmanship and visual curation guided by family photos, the sad reality of the displacement of people caused by natural and human activities is brought to the fore, retroactively preserving the memory of a place loved and cherished.

The visual style and sensory tone of the film are exceptional, melting the experience into memory rather than just acknowledging it as a record experience. The haunting, picturesque imagery, symbolic colors, and intricate flickerings possess a profound emotional restraint, lending the work a mature weight of significance far beyond its modest five-minute runtime.

Overall, Daria Pankeeva’s animated short showcases love, affection, and loss in an elegiac tribute to a vibrant people and the impact of change on our individual and collective lives. This film brings heartache and poignant sentimentality to its audience, paying homage to the things we love and how we connect them to our relationships and impacts on society.