Following her train journey home to Kyiv, filmmaker Mariia Volodymyrivna Ponomarova searches for the missing part of her full name—the patronymic, a Ukrainian middle name derived from one’s father's name—that disappeared from her international documents for better or for worse.
The night train that heads to Ukraine is about to depart from the Polish border. The Netherlands-based Ukrainian filmmaker Mariia Volodymirivna Ponomarova is asked for her passport at the customs, yet patronymic, a middle name—derived from the name of her father, Volodymyr and given to her by birth—is missing. It is absent, erased, omitted, not mentioned. How come this happened? For how long has it been gone? Combining documents and archival footage with the staged interplay of the tight train compartment set up, Mariia reflects on the remnants of patriarchy, postcolonial legal inertia and name erasure while tracing the tender and vulnerable bond with her father, who still lives in Kyiv.
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