Movie
How to Divorce During the War
Narrative tropes
Humans Never Give Up
mediumThe film explicitly closes on resilience as its central theme. Both Marija and Vytas refuse to collapse under compounding crises — a broken marriage and a war in a neighboring country — instead finding new purpose (she helps refugees and makes principled business decisions; he turns to activism). Dovile is marked as 'surprisingly resilient.' Their lifestyles paradoxically converge after separation, signalling hope persisting when logic says it shouldn't. The emotional payoff is not a victory but the ambivalent decision to keep going — matching the trope's requirement that the climax be the choice to endure rather than any external triumph.
About this trope: Facing impossible odds, humans endure, adapt, and find reasons to keep going. Resilience and refusal to surrender is humanity's defining and most admirable trait.
Movies that share these tropes
Full plot (spoilers)
Set in Vilnius, Lithuania in February 2022, the film opens with Marija, a high-flying corporate executive, calmly telling her husband Vytas that she wants a divorce and has fallen out of love with him. The conversation takes place during an extended long-take scene as the couple waits for their young daughter Dovile to finish her music lesson. Vytas, an unemployed art-house film director who has taken on most of the household duties, is stunned. The morning after this bombshell, they wake to the news that Russia has launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — the worst possible timing for an already fractured marriage. As the separation begins in earnest, each spouse must navigate a newly unstable personal landscape against the backdrop of a war in a neighboring country. Vytas, with nowhere else to go, moves in with his parents, who hold pro-Russian political views — a source of additional friction given the geopolitical moment. Marija, meanwhile, shoulders increased domestic and childcare responsibilities while also confronting how the conflict is disrupting her business; she makes principled decisions in her professional life, including helping refugees. Vytas, for his part, finds a new sense of purpose through political activism and protest. Their ever-observant daughter Dovile adjusts to shuttling between parents, appearing surprisingly resilient despite the upheaval. As the reasons for the breakdown of the marriage are gradually revealed — Marija's hunger for stimulation and resentment of stagnation, the imbalance of ambition between the spouses — the film traces how extraordinary geopolitical events refract through intimate domestic life. The narrative resists simple resolution: neither spouse finds that separation brings the relief or happiness they anticipated, and their divergent post-split lifestyles begin, paradoxically, to converge. The film closes on an ambivalent note emphasizing resilience and the complexity of human relationships during crisis rather than offering a tidy romantic outcome.
Sources: Wikipedia, Sundance.org, MovieMarker, Zeitgeist Films, IMDb (search/news)