Волонтери на війні: образно-стилістичні характеристики українського героїчного кінематографу 2014–2025 років

The purpose of the article is to identify the figurative and stylistic characteristics and narrative strategies for understanding the role of volunteers in Ukrainian heroic cinema of 2014–2025. The methodology. The research is based on a morphological and thematic approach to understanding the above scientific problem. The article also uses special art methods of filming analysis: analysis of narrative strategy, stylistic analysis, analysis of figurative structures and artistic means of screen expressiveness. The results presented in the article are: 1) in the heroic cinema of 2014–2025, which represents the images of volunteers in the Russian-Ukrainian war, two main narrative strategies are used: the first-when there is a volunteer (or group of volunteers) in the center of screen history; The second is when the activities and images of volunteers are represented through other movie characters (or not present in the frame at all, but the viewer gets acquainted with the volunteer movement through the results of their assistance to others); 2) in both strategies, the cinema is aimed at showing that the heroism of volunteers is not the result of some idealized desire for glory, but rather a consequence of the moral choice they face daily; 3) ideologically, virtually all of the films of heroic cinema are pro- Ukrainian. This does not mean that they are deprived of how the volunteer movement develops during the war in Ukraine. The presence of some controversiality, on the contrary, is a valuable component of screen narration, providing it with polyphony vision of modern volunteering; 4) narrative strategies of many films, both game and documentary, are based on a display of many personal stories, where volunteers are not perceived as abstract characters, but as people with their own motivations and internal experiences. Otherwise, when the personal history of the volunteer is not represented by the authors of the film, the main characters of the film through dialogues and other cinema techniques form the viewer’s perception of positive results of volunteer work; 5) the main stylistic direction, which represents the images of volunteers in the war. However, it is possible to record elements of naturalism (or increased expression) to enhance the emotionality of the atmosphere created by the authors of the film. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the article filled the lacuna on understanding the images of volunteers in the Russian-Ukrainian war, as filled in the heroic cinema of Ukraine. The practical significance is that there are certain trends on how volunteers in the war on the material of game and documentary in modern Ukraine are represented. The prospects for further research are the need to understand the figurative and stylistic characteristics of other types of characters of modern Ukrainian heroic cinema.