Ines Tanovic, Oksana Leuta and Hala Rajab grew up in countries at war. Some were children, others adults when the conflicts began. Sarajevo was said to be the last war in Europe, before Ukraine was attacked. The war in Syria is not over yet.

Each of them is faced with the question of exile: to leave or to stay. Two of them have stayed in their home countries, in Kyiv and Sarajevo. They wonder how to tell the story of the war: through cinema, the stage or the media. Oksana has been an actress and cameraman for international journalists since the start of the all-out war in Ukraine. Hala wants to tell the everyday story of war through film and fiction. Inès has set up a shelter for refugees in Sarajevo.

They are three young women facing the world, trying to talk to each other to bring about better times. These are stories of transmission: from mothers to daughters. And stories of commitment and encouragement.

They also bring to life a whole host of absentees who also had something to say to us: the disappeared and those who couldn’t be there. They give voice to our times, relentlessly bringing new forms of resistance to the fore. They tell us in very concrete terms how bodies, lives and imaginations bear the imprint of this experience of war.

Together, we went to Sarajevo to shoot images at Ines’ home. The images appear on the screen during the show, in dialogue with the present on stage. Hala and Oksana discovered Bosnia, and asked Ines’ family and friends questions about what lies ahead after the war: reconstruction, reconciliation.

Who has ever seen their parents’ tears? That’s the question we ask every time. Here, the question of transmission is even more acute. For each performance, one or two people linked to the stories, from different generations, are invited on stage as witnesses. A grandmother, a 10-year-old girl, a sister. It changes every time. So that the story is readjusted and new every evening.

This collective ephemera is created on stage, with the present and the absent that we summon, through live images and drawings. Live music, created and played by Emma Prat, helps create new moments and accompanies the narrative.