Helen Anna Flanagan

Sport is a spectacle that fulfils the social function theatre once served in antiquity—gathering a city or nation within a shared experience. Narratives of heroism and sacrifice construct a founding myth of the state: a glorious origin story that often conceals underlying trauma. The film Blood Sweat Tears focuses on this trauma—emotional, physical, and historical—affecting both individual and collective bodies, and on the modern therapeutic practices (self-help groups, massage, exercise) used to address it. The work centres on what is expelled or exorcised from the body and mind, portraying the main character as someone who releases both emotional (confessional and biographical) and physical (sweat and saliva) discharge.

Blood Sweat Tears is also an artistic investigation into the cult of the disciplined athletic body in Soviet visual culture. A monumental Soviet mural located in the interior of the National University of Physical Education and Sport in Kyiv loosely inspired the fictional script and serves as the film’s backdrop.