For the short documentary Muscle Memory, director Mikayla Jean Miller follows a community of young Muay Thai boxers in Kharkiv, Ukraine, exploring childhood, connection, bodily wisdom, and growing up just 20km from the frontline.

Shot on 16mm film by cinematographer Denys Lushchyk, the film observes how ordinary moments and extraordinary circumstances coexist in the children’s lives, where birdsong, trams, traffic, skipping ropes, laughter, boxing gloves striking pads, and air raid sirens become part of the same sonic landscape.

- Mikayla Jean Miller 

Revealing the nuances of everyday life under war through urban soundscapes and the children’s reflections, Muscle Memory examines how sound and movement shape memory, identity, and relationship to place, when conflict and its unfamiliar sounds merge with the experiences of youth.