Oleksandr Tyshchenko (Alex Luna) brought a deeply Ukrainian story to Washington this week, joining Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. and the film’s producing team at Ukraine House for the presentation of Here I Am, a short feature film centered on war, grief, faith, and the quiet courage of military chaplaincy.
The Washington screening introduced the Ukrainian project to an international audience in a setting that has become an important cultural and diplomatic home for Ukraine in the United States. For Tyshchenko, known professionally as Alex Luna, the evening was not only a film presentation. It was a chance to place a human face on Ukraine’s wartime reality, beyond headlines and battlefield numbers.
The film, described by its team as a military drama based on real stories from Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, follows people who continue to serve after devastating loss. Its subject is intimate, but its frame is national: Ukrainians who keep helping, fighting, praying, and holding one another together while the war reshapes every part of civilian and spiritual life.
“For us, this film is an opportunity to show the world the real Ukraine,” said co-producer Oleksandr Tyshchenko. “A country that continues to fight every day. A country of people who, even after loss, find the strength to help others, serve, support, and do what seems impossible. Through such stories, the global community can understand more deeply what Ukrainians are experiencing today — not only at the front, but within themselves.”
That emotional core is what gives Here I Am its weight. The story follows Lana, a woman who loses her only son, a combat medic killed at the front while saving a chaplain. After grief and an inner crisis, she makes a choice that changes the direction of her life: she becomes a military chaplain in the same unit where her son served.
A female chaplain at the center of the story
The project stands out because it focuses on a female chaplain, a subject rarely placed at the center of a wartime fiction film. According to the release shared with the presentation, only four women chaplains officially serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Their experiences became an important source of inspiration for the film, including the story of Oleksandra Andriyashyn.
By choosing Lana as the emotional anchor, Here I Am refuses to treat chaplaincy as a ceremonial detail. It looks instead at the spiritual labor of war: sitting with loss, keeping people from breaking, and serving when there is no easy language left for pain. The film’s Christian framework is present, but the story reaches beyond one community. It asks what faith can mean when survival itself has become a daily act of discipline.
Ambassador Taylor’s presence gave the Washington event additional resonance. A career diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr. has long been associated with U.S.-Ukraine relations. At Ukraine House, his participation helped frame the film as part of a broader conversation about how Ukraine’s story is carried into American civic and cultural spaces.
Why Rev. Cindy Voorhees joined the film
The Rev. Canon Cindy Voorhees, one of the project’s co-producers, also brought a direct personal connection to the story. Voorhees visited Ukraine twice during the war, where she met with Ukrainian chaplains and prayed with them. According to the production notes, those encounters made her decision to join the project immediate.
For Voorhees, Here I Am speaks not only about war, but about the place of women in both the church and the battlefield. The film’s heroine is not written as a symbol floating above reality. She is a grieving mother who becomes a servant to others because she has known the cost of war in the most personal possible way.
The Washington presentation also highlighted the collaborative structure behind the project. Here I Am was produced by Olga Lehman of Faith Control Productions in the United States, with Igor Volkov serving as producer in Ukraine. The co-producers include Cindy Voorhees, Mike Yoder, and Oleksandr Tyshchenko, with Roman Barabash as creative producer.
The creative team includes screenwriter Andrii Babyk, director Konstantin Oktyabrsky, and director of photography Dmytro Havryliuk. The film was shot in Ukraine on real locations, with a Ukrainian team and participation from military representatives, grounding the work in the visual and emotional landscape it depicts.
A restrained visual language for an urgent subject
Rather than approaching the material through spectacle, the filmmakers chose a restrained arthouse language: natural light, minimalist sound, and close attention to the faces and silences of the characters. That choice matters. In a story about chaplaincy and mourning, the most powerful moments are often the least declarative ones.
The result, according to the team, is a film that tries to honor real Ukrainian lives without turning them into slogans. It is fictional, but its emotional architecture comes from the lived experiences of people who have endured loss, displacement, service, and the daily pressure of war.
“Here I Am is a fictional story, but it is based on real Ukrainian lives,” Tyshchenko said. “People who survived loss, war, pain, and at the same time found strength to keep living. For us, it was important to show the world, honestly and humanely, not only the tragedy of war, but also the inner strength that holds Ukraine today.”
That focus on inner strength is where Tyshchenko’s role becomes especially visible. His work as a co-producer places him inside a project that is not simply about representing Ukraine abroad, but about shaping the language through which audiences understand Ukrainian resilience. For American viewers, Here I Am offers a point of entry into stories that often remain unseen: chaplains, mothers, soldiers, volunteers, and spiritual leaders holding communities together from the inside.
Festival recognition and what comes next
Here I Am has already received recognition on the faith-based film circuit. The project has been nominated in four categories at the International Christian Film & Music Festival: Best Lead Actor for Mihailo Docenko, Best Lead Actress for Lesya Ostrovskaja, Best Director for Konstantin Oktyabrsky, and Best Short Film.
Those nominations place the film within a wider international conversation about faith-based cinema, but the project’s strongest argument remains its specificity. Here I Am is not trying to make the war abstract. It stays with one woman, one loss, one calling, and the difficult question of how service can continue after grief has changed everything.
For more on Alex Luna’s cultural work, read Gossip Stone’s earlier feature on Alex Luna’s Somnia Disaster exhibition at the Bulgarian Parliament.
