TO DANCE IS TO RESIST — a film by Julian Lautenbacher

Queer couple Jay and Vol’demar find strength and community in Kyiv’s underground rave scene — where dance becomes both survival and resistance in the face of war.

TO DANCE IS TO RESIST follows Jay and Vol’demar, a queer couple and professional dancers whose lives unfold within Kyiv’s underground scene — a fragile sanctuary of freedom amid Russia’s full-scale invasion. As air raid sirens interrupt the night, they turn to dance studios, clubs, and stages as places of refuge, transforming movement into an act of resistance.

With intimate access, the film captures their daily lives: tender moments at home during blackouts, rehearsals where bodies carry and release trauma, and raves that pulse with both joy and danger. The challenges during the war are constant, yet their courage shows in the decision to keep creating, to keep loving, and to hold their community close.

Structured as a poetic, non-linear journey, the film blends vérité with performance, archival fragments, and immersive cinematography that mirrors the emotional landscape of its protagonists: a cathartic processing of the war through art — while a textured sound world transmits the pulse of Kyiv’s heartbeat to audiences beyond Ukraine’s borders.