War photographer Anastasia Taylor-Lind and director Paolina Stefani discuss “You Don’t Think It Will Happen to You”, a short film that follows Anastasia reporting the war in Ukraine.
Through the frontline friendship between Anastasia and Ukrainian writer Alisa Sopova, the film honours intimacy and empathy amidst violence. Moving across multiple layers of authorship and distance, it becomes a story about women witnessing war, friendship forged under fire, and what it means to tell the story of the storytellers.
From Anastasia’s first-hand experience to Paolina’s attempt to tell Anastasia and Alisa’s story, the panel reflects on women championing one another in the act of war reporting and witnessing.
Moderated by filmmaker and producer Alice Aedy, the conversation gains further depth through a shared history of collaboration, a lineage of mentorship in which these three women have continually supported one another’s paths as storytellers.
About Anastasia Taylor-Lind
Anastasia Taylor-Lind is a British/Swedish photojournalist and a poet.
For the past decade Anastasia has collaborated with Alisa Sopova, a journalist and an anthropologist from the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. In 2023, she received the Canon Female Photojournalist Award for her long-term reporting from eastern Ukraine, and over 100,000 people visited her exhibition ‘Ukraine: Photographs from the Frontline’ at the Imperial War Museum.
Anastasia is a National Geographic Society Explorer, TED Fellow, and 2016 Nieman Fellow at Harvard university. Her first book Maidan – Portraits from the Black Square, about the 2014 revolution in Ukraine, was published the same year. Her debut poetry collection One Language was published by Smith|Doorstop in 2022.
Anastasia has Masters degrees in photojournalism and poetry.
About Alice Aedy
Alice Aedy is an award-winning documentary film-maker and campaigner. Alice is Co-Founder and CEO of Earthrise, an impact-driven media company for climate. With years of experience telling the human stories that matter most, Earthrise harnesses the power of innovative multi-media storytelling to transform climate, culture and consciousness. In 2023, Alice was featured on Forbes 30 Under 30 for Social Impact.
About Paolina Stefani
Paolina Stefani is a London-based director and video editor dedicated to poetic writing and cinematic storytelling. Her work takes an intersectional approach, with a particular focus on women’s stories, exploring language, identity, gender, art, music, and social justice, often weaving intimate narratives with broader political and cultural themes.