Kherson fell to Russian forces within days of the February 2022 invasion, becoming the first major Ukrainian city to be occupied. This DW Documentary film gathers eyewitness accounts from residents who lived through more than eight months under occupation, describing blocked roads, shortages of medicine, food, and cash, and the switch from Ukrainian television to Russian state channels. Thousands fled the port city while those who stayed faced strict exit restrictions and what the film's interviewees describe as arbitrary terror from occupying forces. The narrative moves from the chaos of the initial takeover in early March through the daily grind of life cut off from reliable information and supplies, ending with the Russian withdrawal on 11 November 2022. Told largely through the voices of people who stayed behind, the film builds a ground-level picture of occupation rather than a strategic overview of the war, focusing on what it meant to lose access to news, medicine, and free movement for the better part of a year.