Children, as well as childish adults, can readily be characterized with a kind of innocence that is easily conflated with selective obliviousness. A literal shelter, such as the one observed in A House Made of Splinters, exists to provide children a sense of security from the weaknesses of their parents, a sense of enclosure inadvertently extended to include a sense of physical protection from the ongoing effects of the current War in Ukraine, a temporary relief that can only exist on the condition of its transience an in harsh contrast to the inevitable side effect of leaving children in the hands of a systemic upbringing where collective effort exists in place of collective responsibility: the development of an uncharacteristic subjective maturity that, in keeping with the general emotional underdevelopment of most children, is wholly subjective and is maintained and lost on a frequent, impulsive basis.

A House Made of Splinters takes a gentle hand in documenting this phenomenon as a loosely episodic triptych of displacement, drawing from each child's respective knowledge of the situation a nuanced portrayal of the social consciousness of Ukraine as it pertains to the stability of nuclear family units, blurring the line between neglectful abandonment, systemic sicknesses resulting in a general decrease in the reliability of childhood provisions, and the sheer loss of control that many of the citizens of the country are experiencing as they become an unwitting battleground for the deluded ideological selfishness of international superpowers, digging much further into the psychological realm of nation than the prospect of a boardinghouse full of sad kids would imply.

(Mid) 7 / 10 - Good