Movie
Kherson: Human Safari
Narrative tropes
Rebels vs. The Empire
highRussian military occupation of Kherson is a textbook asymmetric oppressor vs. resistance setup: an overwhelming foreign force imposes arrests, torture, and systematic violence while outgunned local defenders and an underground resistance network organize under the slogan 'Kherson is Ukraine!' The resistance is framed as morally righteous, the occupiers as cruel and dehumanizing, and the arc ends with the liberation of Kherson by Ukrainian forces — victory achieved despite the power gap.
About this trope: A small outmatched group rises up against a massive oppressive regime or institutional power. The rebellion is framed as morally righteous.
Humans Never Give Up
highThe film's entire structure is a testament to civilian endurance under objectively hopeless conditions: nine months of occupation, ongoing artillery and drone strikes, the Kakhovka Dam flood, and the 'human safari' drone campaign. Citizens take to the streets unarmed, an underground journalist risks torture to sustain morale, and the city responds to active combat with choreographed dance, art, and humor. The documentary frames this cultural resilience explicitly as defiance — survival as an act of will rather than strategy — and continues past liberation into the ongoing siege, making the decision to keep going the emotional core rather than any single victory.
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)
Kherson: Human Safari is a 72-minute documentary directed by U.S. war journalist Zarina Zabrisky, who lived in Kherson and filmed the city's residents throughout the conflict. The film is structured in thematic chapters — Invasion, Occupation, Flood, and ongoing drone warfare — each opening with choreographed dance sequences shot under active combat conditions. On February 24, 2022, Russian tanks entered Kherson, Ukraine's southern city, launching a brutal occupation marked by arrests, torture, and systematic violence against civilians. Despite being outnumbered, local defense forces resisted, and ordinary citizens took to the streets under the slogan 'Kherson is Ukraine!' An underground resistance network formed, with figures such as journalist Valentyna risking arrest and torture to gather intelligence and sustain morale. After nine months of occupation, Ukrainian armed forces liberated Kherson in November 2022, but the city's suffering continued: Russian artillery and drone strikes became relentless across the Dnipro river frontline. In June 2023, the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam flooded large swaths of the city and surrounding region, compounding the humanitarian catastrophe. By 2024, Russian forces had adopted what the film terms 'human safari' — the deliberate use of FPV drones to hunt individual civilians in the streets, drop explosives and internationally banned mines on them, film the carnage, and circulate the footage as dehumanizing propaganda. The film documents this ongoing terror campaign through the testimony and lived experience of Kherson's residents, while also showing the city's cultural resilience: citizens embrace art, humor, and community as acts of defiance. The documentary functions simultaneously as a war-crimes record and a testament to civilian resistance, with all proceeds directed toward humanitarian relief in Kherson.
Sources: TMDb overview, khersonhumansafari.com (official site), Letterboxd, cityofliterature.co.nz, Web search (UkraineWorld, IMDb listing)