Thursday, July 31, 2025
Traces of Crimea (To the Moon & Back #5)
By Vincent Moon
Vincent Moon releases Traces of Crimea, a feature-length film documenting the extraordinary music and stories of the Tatars, the Krymchaks, the Greeks and the Bulgarian communities of Crimea two years before its annexation by Russia
It was August 2012, and it was still Ukraine.
I had just crossed the country from Lviv, recording the sounds of the Carpathians. I had passed through Kyiv to film Dakha Brakha, wandered into forgotten villages to capture the lives of ageing farmers, and fallen deeply in love with Odessa, where echoes of Yiddish songs could still be heard.
My friend Anna was from there, and together we set off on a journey to the Crimean Peninsula, drawn by the music of the region’s many ethnic minorities. And there were so many – from the Tatars returned from Siberian exile to the Krymchaks still holding on, from Greek villages to stories whispered in Bulgarian. Everything seemed to float in a dignified and tragic ancestry, suspended in the memories of a tormented 20th century.
But their world was about to shift once more. Two years later, Russia would begin its modern expansion, seizing the peninsula, redrawing borders, uprooting lives, and breaking old stories to forge
new ones.
This film bears witness to a time before, and carries within it the tremors of a time to come – a world still haunted by ghosts and families, hidden histories and epic tales, songs and dances from a land where women and men had once known how to live in peace.
