U2 have shared a powerful new short film to accompany the video for their song ‘Yours Eternally’ – check it out below.
The track, which sees Bono and guitarist The Edge collaborate with Ed Sheeran and Ukrainian musician-turned-soldier Taras Topolia, features on U2’s politically-charged EP ‘Days Of Ash’, which the band surprise released last week.
The track is written in the form of a letter from a soldier on active duty, and comes with a short documentary film directed by Ukrainian cinematographer and filmmaker Ilya Mikhaylus.
The film, which is soundtracked by U2’s new song, captures the daily lives of Alina and her fellow soldiers fighting on the frontlines of the war, and marks four years since Russia invaded Ukraine. It is part of a full scale documentary set to be released at the end of this year. Watch it below.
Mikhaylus said of the short film: “For four years, Ukraine has been resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion, and the soldiers of the Khartiya Corps are among the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians defending their homeland.
“In this short film, and in the upcoming full-length documentary, we attempt to show the beating human heart of those incredible men and women, the struggles and sacrifices they are making everyday for the most sacred thing on this planet – freedom.”
Since the start of the war on February 2024, the number of casualties on both sides totals nearly two million people, reports Sky News.
Arriving last week, ‘Days Of Ash’ featured six tracks and was described by Bono and co. as a response to current events, and dedicated to those fighting on the frontlines of freedom.
Four of the tracks are about individuals, and centre around a mother, a father, a teenage girl whose lives were cut short, as well as from the point of view of a soldier who laments at having to give up his dreams of creativity to go and defend the freedom of his country.
“It’s been a thrill having the four of us back together in the studio over the last year,” Bono shared, also revealing that a full album of new material will be arriving later in 2026.
“The songs on ‘Days of Ash’ are very different in mood and theme to the ones we’re going to put on our album later in the year. These EP tracks couldn’t wait; these songs were impatient to be out in the world. They are songs of defiance and dismay, of lamentation,” he added.
To coincide with the new EP, U2 also announced the return of their fanzine, Propaganda.
Speaking in Propaganda about how he came to work with Sheeran, Bono said: “Only in the last few years have we gotten to know Ed and his wife Cherry – she’s a very serious person…fun…but a serious climate activist, really walks the talk. Ed is a whirling dervish of a talent. High energy which he can turn on easier than he can turn off. I see a lot of my younger self in Ed, although he takes himself a little less seriously than I took myself at his age.”
He went on to say that when Sheeran came over to Dublin to record, he noticed they had “other things in common.” He elaborated: “He’s even more impatient in the studio than me…” He said when working together, they “wrote songs into the small hours” and said “there might have been a certain amount of Guinness involved.”
The new EP arrives following Bono sharing his thoughts on the best way to achieve freedom “in every part of the world where health and humanity are at risk” in op-ed for The Atlantic last year.
He wrote the piece ahead of receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the US. Since then, the singer has gone on to speak out about the Israel-Palestine crisis, saying Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions “feel like uncharted territory”, and also call for the release of Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti, who is imprisoned in an Israeli jail.
