Performing Trauma and Memory in Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema: Multimodal Perspectives on the Guide

Abstract

This study explores the multimodal construction of trauma and memory in contemporary Ukrainian cinema, focusing on The Guide (2014). Ukrainian films increasingly address historical and political trauma, negotiating personal and collective suffering through embodied and sensory cinematic practices. Drawing on multimodal discourse theory and trauma studies, the analysis examines how visual, verbal, auditory, gestural, spatial, and temporal resources converge in constructing trauma and memory. In The Guide, trauma is foregrounded as a bodily phenomenon which renders psychological and moral conflict visible, transforming suffering into an affective experience. It merges individual grief with collective trauma. Multimodal orchestration collapses the temporal distinctions between past and present. Memory is enacted through ritualized practices, including musical performance and material artifacts. Songs, clothing, and instruments such as the bandura function as mnemonic tools that frame memory as participatory and situate Ukrainian national identity within sensory frameworks. The Guide exemplifies a distinctive trajectory in Ukrainian cinema by emphasizing corporeality and ritualized memory as central to cultural resilience. By showing how trauma and memory are multimodally enacted, the film demonstrates the inseparability of historical suffering and cultural continuity, offering a new insight into the ethical and aesthetic dimensions of post-Soviet cinematic practices.