Girl Away From Home

13-year-old gymnast Nastia from Kyiv trains intensively with her four teammates for the national championships in Ukraine. Between training sessions, they make dance videos, do acrobatic stunts and laugh a lot. Nastia is convinced they can handle anything as long as they are together. But then war breaks out. Her parents send her to Germany with her grandma, hoping the separation will be temporary.

In this youth documentary, Nastia herself narrates, via voice-over, how she experienced that drastic year. Head over heels, she had to leave her country and then spent weeks in a German flat, trapped and sad. She looks wistfully at the happy videos she made with her best friends shortly before. On the phone to her parents, she pretends everything is going well, but in reality she is scared: will she ever see her parents and her homeland again?

Slowly, Nastia finds some peace again when she joins a local gymnastics club. The war is still there, but the new surroundings offer her a sense of home. This is a portrait of a resilient girl, strong family ties, close friendships and the power of sport as a source of support.