What does it mean to be a pacifist when your country is invaded? And what happens when war turns a moral conviction into a personal, concrete, inevitable choice?
It is from this dramatic paradox that the meeting with Artem Chapeye, a Ukrainian writer and journalist who, before the Russian invasion, considered himself a committed pacifist, begins. On February 24, 2022, his life changes radically: the bombings force him and his family to flee from Kyiv. Shortly after, Chapeye decides to enlist in the army.
In his book Normal people don’t go around armed, the author tells the everyday life of a European plunged into war and tackles, without easy answers, the questions that this experience imposes: what does it mean to defend your freedom? What is the individual's responsibility in the face of violence? And how do personal beliefs reconcile with the need to protect those you love?
His story thus becomes a reflection on pacifism, liberty, and the choices that define who we are. A personal testimony that looks at the war of today, but also at the future: what we will have to face when the weapons fall silent.
A meeting to listen to the voice of someone who has not observed war from afar, but has lived it firsthand and had to choose.
