“Militantropos” is a Ukrainian documentary co-directed by Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova and Simon Mozgovyi, members of the Tabor collective. The film takes an anthropological approach to observing how the Russo-Ukrainian war reshapes human behavior in everyday life. Rather than following a single protagonist or a linear narrative, the directors weave together a range of situations and faces; soldiers, civilians, children, recently liberated territories; to portray a society adapting, against its will, to destruction and violence.

The title, a neologism blending the Latin "milit" (soldier) and the Greek "anthropos" (human being), names the particular posture a person adopts upon entering a state of war. Filmed between 2020 and 2024, the documentary rejects the spectacular conventions of war cinema in favor of a sober, dignified observation of those living through it. As the first part of a planned triptych, Militantropos questions both the experience of war and cinema's own capacity, or inability, to represent it.