Ivan Sautkin’s work as a volunteer helping people to safety gave him rare access to the trauma faced by people forced from their homes. The director relives the challenges of making the film as it screens in Cannes

There’s a moment in Ivan Sautkin’s new documentary, A Poem for Little People, in which a humanitarian volunteer tries to reason with a group of women filling cans with the grimy water that has collected in a shell hole in their suburban street. They should come with him now, says the volunteer, Anton Yaremchuk. It is August 2022, Bakhmut, Ukraine. Explosions boom, horribly close. Despite the obvious peril, they refuse to go. They ask him: how will they get the money to live if they leave? Yaremchuk, exasperated, states the obvious: if they stay, they could be killed at any moment.

In another scene, an elderly woman who has made the wrenching decision to abandon her apartment, locks her front door with a tremulous hand – then remembers she’s left her crutch inside and has to unlock it again. As she climbs into the volunteers’ minibus, she covers her head with her hands for a moment. As she raises her face again, a whole lifetime of emotions seems to pass across it.

People in Kyiv and Kharkiv celebrate win in world heavyweight unification fight as symbolic achievement for the country

From the capital, Kyiv, to the heavily attacked region of Kharkiv, news of Oleksandr Usyk’s win over Tyson Fury brought war-weary Ukrainians a rare and very welcome moment of victory and celebration.

Usyk, who became the first undisputed world heavyweight champion this century after his victory in Riyadh in the early hours of Sunday, said his triumph did not belong to him alone.

Boxer has raised funds for Ukraine but faced criticism in the past for his apparent Moscow-leaning sympathies

On the streets of Kyiv this week, the name of the Ukrainian heavyweight boxer Oleksandr Usyk prompted a few eye-rolls, alongside expressions of admiration for his sporting prowess.

The former cruiserweight, who fights the Briton Tyson Fury for the undisputed heavyweight championship in Saudi Arabia on Saturday night, has been an active fundraiser for the Ukrainian military and humanitarian causes since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion. His success in the ring is a matter of considerable national pride.