News

The latest feature from former political prisoner Oleg Sentsov, one of Ukraine’s most prominent directors, is among eight projects to receive production funding totally near $1m from the European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian films.

This is the first time the fund, launched at the 2023 Berlinale by Efad, the European national film agency organisation, has directly supported production. Projects must have co-producer from an Efad country.

The fiction and documentary films are: Sentsov’s Kai.produced by At Films and Germany’s Ma.ja.de €150,000); Tetiana Khodakivska’s Blue Sweater With A Yellow Hole, produced by Pronto Film with France...

The latest feature from former political prisoner Oleg Sentsov, one of Ukraine’s most prominent directors, is among eight projects to receive production funding totally near $1m from the European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian films.

This is the first time the fund, launched at the 2023 Berlinale by Efad, the European national film agency organisation, has directly supported production. Projects must have co-producer from an Efad country.

The fiction and documentary films are: Sentsov’s Kai.produced by At Films and Germany’s Ma.ja.de €150,000); Tetiana Khodakivska’s Blue Sweater With A Yellow Hole, produced by Pronto Film with France...

Ukrainian production banner Film.UA is partnering with the Find Your Own Foundation and a roster of top directing talents to launch “Missing,” an anthology series that explores the harrowing number of Ukrainians who have gone missing since the Russian invasion. The show will also shed light on the profound impact those losses have had on their families.

Set against the backdrop of the brutal conflict, “Missing” delves deep into the lives of individuals whose stories of loss, hope and determination unfold amidst the chaos of war. Inspired by real-life experiences documented through the Find Your Own Foundation, which was founded by TV host Kateryna Osadcha, the show will focus on the thousands of everyday Ukrainians who have disappeared during the war, as well as the countless others, including children, who have been illegally deported, highlighting the personal stories behind the statistics.

The series will be directed by Natalka Vorozhbyt (Venice...

Jean-François Le Corre of Vivement Lundi!, a co-producer on Oscar-nominated “Flee,” and Marion Guth of a_BAHN have boarded the hybrid animated documentary “Red Zone,” from “Moon Man’s” Darya Bassel, the producer of Oscar-nominated “A House Made of Splinters.”

Leading documentary sales agency Cinephil will be introducing the project to buyers at the Cannes Film Market.

“Red Zone” is directed by Iryna Tsilyk, who won best director at Sundance for “The Earth Is as Blue as an Orange.” “Red Zone” won the Eurimages Special Co-production Development Award at Cph:dox.

The film is based on the filmmaker’s personal experience and will “take audiences on a day in the life of a woman in war,” according to a statement, with Tsilyk “turning the camera on herself and her family.”

Tsilyk’s husband, Artem Chekh, a well-known writer, volunteered to join the army and was in Bakhmut, where the fiercest fighting was taking place,...

The Ukrianian festival ran as a festival within a festival at Filmfest Hamburg.

Christina Tynkevych’s feature debut How Is Katia? was named the winner of the national competition of Ukraine’s Molodist Film Festival, held for the second year in a row as a festival within a festival at Filmfest Hamburg in Germany.

The Scythian Deer statuette and a cash prize of $2,500 was presented to the film’s producer Olha Matat on October 5, at the Abaton cinema by the jury of actress Alina Levshin, psychologist Svetlana Uvarova and film director David Wagner.

The drama about an ambulance doctor seeking...

The Ukrianian festival ran as a festival within a festival at Filmfest Hamburg.

Christina Tynkevych’s feature debut How Is Katia? was named the winner of the national competition of Ukraine’s Molodist Film Festival, held for the second year in a row as a festival within a festival at Filmfest Hamburg in Germany.

The Scythian Deer statuette and a cash prize of $2,500 was presented to the film’s producer Olha Matat on October 5, at the Abaton cinema by the jury of actress Alina Levshin, psychologist Svetlana Uvarova and film director David Wagner.

The drama about an ambulance doctor seeking...

The Rough Cut Presentations section has expanded, including five additional projects from Ukraine.

IDFA Forum (November 12-15), the co-production and co-financing market of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), has selected its 2023 edition titles, with the likes of Aboozar Amini, Asmae El Moudir and Michael Madsen returning with their latest projects to Forum Pitch, while the Rough Cut Presentations section has expanded.

Afghanistan-born, Netherlands-based filmmaker Amini’s Kabul, City In The Wind screened at IDFA in 2018, and is now pitching Kabul, Year Zero, which threads together four vivid coming-of-age stories against the backdrop of war.

After presenting The Postcard at IDFA...

‘Festival within a festival’ opens with Anna Buryachkova’s Venice’s Orizzonti Extra title Forever-Forever

The Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival is returning to the Filmfest Hamburg for the second year running as a “festival within a festival” to present its national competition of Ukrainian feature films.

The competition line-up opens on October 2 with Anna Buryachkova’s Venice’s Orizzonti Extra title Forever-Forever.

The line-up also includes Tonia Noyabrova’s Berlinale’s Panorama film Do You Love Me?, Christina Tynkevych’s How Is Katia, which played in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present last year, Philip Sotnychenko’s Rotterdam and San Sebastian title La Palisiada,...

This film offers an unsparing view of how PoWs are treated when they return home – but it may not reflect the current mood

Ukrainian film-maker Maksym Nakonechnyi finished war drama Butterfly Vision last February, just days before the Russian invasion. His film tells a fictional story about a shellshocked female Ukrainian soldier held prisoner for two months by Russian-backed separatists in Donbas during the conflict that began in 2014. It’s a tough, unsparing movie, and possibly not the Ukrainian film that anyone wants to watch right now as the country fights for survival. Nakonechnyi’s reflective script, co-written with Iryna Tsilyk, doesn’t have Russia in its crosshairs; instead there are some inconveniently downbeat insights into the divided attitudes the soldier faces when she returns home.

The soldier’s name is Lilya (Rita Burkovska), nicknamed “Butterfly”, an aerial reconnaissance expert who is released in a prisoner swap. We watch her...

Further winners include ‘Seven Winters in Tehran’, ‘Mrs. Hansen & The Bad Companions’.

Alexander Mihalkovich and Hanna Badziaka’s Motherland, about the brutal military culture in Belarus, has won the main Dox:Award prize at Cph:dox 2023.

The Sweden-Ukraine-Norway co-production follows two storylines: a woman trying to shed light on the culture of violence and abuse in the Belarusian military after her son was found dead while in the army; and a group of young friends from the techno underground who face being drafted soon.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

The awards were handed out at a ceremony this evening...

Iryna Tsilyk’s documentary offers a female perspective on the war in Ukraine.

Iryna Tsilyk’s Red Zone received a special €20,000 Eurimages development award at Cph:dox, as part of the Cph:Forum industry winners on March 23.

The first-time award was given in support of and solidarity with the Ukrainian film industry, to the best pitch by a Ukrainian film.

It was selected by jurors Emma Scott, head of distribution and short film production at Screen Ireland, plus producers Rikke Tambo Andersen of Tambo Film and Heino Deckert Makri of ma.je.de.

The jurors praised an “innovative look at the inner...

Three projects pitched at Cph:forum – the industry program of Cph:dox, the Copenhagen-based documentary festival – have been awarded cash prizes. They are Robin Petré’s “Only on Earth,” Iryna Tsilyk’s “Red Zone” and Yegor Troyanovsky’s “Cuba & Alaska.” The filmmakers were awarded at a ceremony in the Danish capital on Thursday.

Petré’s “Only on Earth” garnered the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award worth €20,000 for best pitch. The docu, produced by Signe Skov Thomsen, and Malene Flindt Pedersen, depicts a journey deep into one of Europe’s hottest fire zones, Galicia, where wild horses roam the mountains under the watch of local cowboys. These horses are excellent at fire prevention, but now they are vanishing in the clash between humans and nature.

Emma Scott, Rikke Tambo Andersen (producer at Tambo Film) and Heino Deckert Makri (producer at ma.ja.de.) made up the team of jurors for the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award.

Cph:forum, the financing and co-production event held during Cph:dox documentary film festival in Copenhagen, will introduce new projects by filmmakers such as Ljubomir Stefanov (“Honeyland”), Jessica Kingdon (“Ascension”), Finlay Pretsell (“Time Trial”), Ousmane Samassekou (“The Last Shelter”), Mila Turajlić (“The Other Side of Everything”), Tonislav Hristov (“The Good Postman”), Iryna Tsilyk (“The Earth Is Blue as an Orange”) and Brett Story (“The Hottest August”), among others.

Stefanov, who was nominated for an Oscar for “Honeyland,” will be pitching “House of Earth.” He teams with producer Maya E. Rudolph, who produced Emmy-nominated “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” and Sarah D’hanens. The film centers on transgender sex worker Pinky, who returns to her Roma community after 30 years, and finds two families in need of a matriarch. Torn between her biological kin and chosen queer family, Pinky attempts to build a future that feels like home.

Kingdon, who was Oscar nominated for “Ascension,” arrives with “Untitled Animal Project,...

Cph:dox also sets work-in-progress, Change co-production selections.

New feature documentaries from Honeyland director Ljubomir Stefanov and Ascension filmmaker Jessica Kingdon are among the 33 projects selected for Cph:Forum, the financing and co-production market of Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival.

Macedonian filmmaker Stefanov is presenting House of Earth, about a transgender sex worker who returns to her Roma community after 30 years on the run, only to be torn between her biological kin and her chosen queer family. The Macedonian-us co-production is produced by Maya E. Rudolph and Sarah D’hanens, and is looking for €405,000 funding to supplement its €45,000 in place from Louverture Films and private equity.

IDFA is one of many festivals to have strong Ukrainian line-up - but can this continue?

While hundreds of filmmakers, sales agents and distributors were descending on Amsterdam for IDFA’s industry event The Forum over the weekend, another documentary festival was taking place far away in war-torn Ukraine.

The Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival was held in Kyiv, lasting only from 11-13 November, with few international guests in attendance and no industry events.

Films screening included Oleksiy Radynski’s Infinity: According To Florian, Pawel Lozinski’s The Balcony and Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere.

The...

Timo, played here by Andriy Cherednyk, with Felix, played by Yuriy Izdryk. Iryna Tsylik: 'I have my memories from the past about difficult, tough times and the Nineties, when men around me were mostly very lost' Rock Paper Grenade steps back into Nineties Ukraine and the life of Tymophiy. Timo, as his friends and family call him, is looking to the West in a world that is changing fast in the wake of the country’s independence from the Soviet Union and Tsylik takes a playful approach to his coming-of-age tale. It’s a world, however, that director Iryna Tsilyk shows is heavily impacted by conflict trauma, represented by Felix (Yuriy Izdryk), a mysterious Afghanistan veteran with Ptsd who is in a relationship with Timo’s gran (Halyna Veretelnyk-Stephanova), much to the upset of Timo’s mum (Anastasiya Karpenko) and who strikes up an unusual friendship with the youngster.

The film,...

Faded wallpaper with a green pattern covers every inch of the wall. The cabinets are made of dark wood as if dreading the whiteness of minimalist design. On the other side of the same wall, posters of Ice-t, Michael Jordan, and Sylvester Stallone cover the old wallpaper beneath it. A Soviet past in the first room and a yearning for the West in the second. Such is the symbolic conflict in Rock Paper Grenade, the first fiction feature by Ukrainian filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk. The stylish follow-up to her acclaimed documentary The Earth Is Blue As An Orange is based on her husband Artem Chekh’s autobiographical novel about growing up in Nineties Ukraine.

The room with American superstars on the walls is Timophiy’s. He is shown first as a child (Andriy Cherednyk) but most of the film focuses on his teenage years (when he is played by Vladyslav Baliuk). He lives with.

Rock, Paper, Grenade has the feel of an encounter with an old friend after a long time. He will tell you a lot of stories but not long afterwards, you will just remember fragments.

Based on the autobiographical novel Who Are You? by her husband Artem Chekh director Iryna Tsilyk’s coming-of-age drama tells the story of the unusual friendship between a boy, Tymophiy and his grandmother’s strange lover Felix (Yuriy Izdryk). The director leads us through Tymophiy´s life from his childhood until adulthood by way of episodes of varying significance, including everything from buying new modern trainers and having a first girlfriend.

These reminiscences are combined with sequences involving Felix. The longer we watch, the more questions and fewer answers about him we have. While Tymophiy’s story and the changes to his character are shown via...

Look into the series Criterion Channel have programmed for August and this lineup is revealed as (in scientific terms) quite something. “Hollywood Chinese” proves an especially deep bench, spanning “cinema’s first hundred years to explore the ways in which the Chinese people have been imagined in American feature films” and bringing with it the likes of Cronenberg’s M. Butterfly, Cimino’s Year of the Dragon, Griffith’s Broken Blossoms, and Ang Lee’s The Wedding Banquet—among 20-or-so others. A three-film Marguerite Duras series brings one of the greatest films ever (India Song) and two lesser-screened experiments; films featuring Yaphet Kotto include Blue Collar, Across 110th Street, and Midnight Run; and lest we ignore a Myrna Loy retro that goes no later than 1949.

Criterion editions include The Asphalt Jungle, Husbands, Rouge, and Sweet Smell of Success; streaming premieres for Loznitsa’s Donbass, Béla Tarr’s watershed Damnation, and...

It’s possible that the very first casualty of war is not truth, but nuance. Since Maksym Nakonechnyi’s grimly disturbing “Butterfly Vision” was conceived and shot, the protracted Donbas conflict during which it is set has flared into all-out war following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It makes the film’s inclusion in this year’s Un Certain Regard lineup an acutely timely statement. With the Cannes Film Festival, like all fests, under intense scrutiny for what its selections suggest about its political stance, this Ukrainian co-production, with its Ukrainian director, cast and crew, is certainly a boost to its anti-Russia bona fides.

But the film’s actual story — which problematizes any more obviously pertinent narrative of unblemished Ukrainian heroism — presents a far more complex picture. Its perceptive pessimism is to its credit as a film. But such a coldly self-critical assessment of the nation’s internal divisions faces an uncertain short-term future,...

This page will update with the latest support measures from the screen industries.

The international film and TV industry is responding to the war in Ukraine with various support initiatives to try to help the millions of people affected.

Screen is collecting a list, below, of initiatives that are seeking to benefit or offer support to the people of Ukraine and those displaced from the country.

We are looking to gather as many relevant initiatives as possible. Please email details about the initiative, where it is based and how people can get involved, to Screen here.

Ukraine: film & TV support...

India’s All That Breathes followed up its victory at the Sundance Film Festival by winning top documentary honors in Cannes.

The film directed by Shaunak Sen, which documents a pair of Muslim brothers in Delhi who devote countless hours to restore the health of ailing black kite birds, earned the L’Œil d’or (“Golden Eye”) award in a ceremony on Saturday.

“From their makeshift bird hospital in their tiny basement, the ‘kite brothers’ care for thousands of these mesmeric creatures that drop daily from New Delhi’s smog-choked skies,” notes a description of the documentary. “As environmental toxicity and civil unrest escalate, the relationship between this Muslim family and the neglected kite forms a poetic chronicle of the city’s collapsing ecology and rising social tensions.”

The Golden Eye jury, headed by filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, saluted All That Breathes for reminding “us that every life matters, and every small action matters.

Indian filmmaker Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes” has won the Cannes Film Festival’s top documentary award, the Golden Eye.

The film won the documentary grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and was acquired by HBO Documentary Films during Cannes, where it played as a special screening.

Set in Indian capital Delhi, where, in an unbreathable atmosphere, the threat of inter-religious massacres floats in the air, the film follows two brothers, Nadeem and Saud, who along with their assistant, dedicate their lives to save the migratory black kites that are destroyed by human madness.

The Golden Eye jury, composed of Agnieszka Holland, Iryna Tsilyk, Pierre Deladonchamps, Alex Vicente and Hicham Falah, said: “The Golden Eye goes to a film that, in a world of destruction, reminds us that every life matters, and every small action matters. You can grab your camera, you can save a bird,...

When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, director Maksym Nakonechnyi – whose debut feature “Butterfly Vision” world premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard – was developing his next film – a comedy about flat-Earth conspiracy under the working title “The Earth Is Flat – I Flew Around It and Saw It.” But he is putting it on the backburner now, he tells Variety, because “this war has already changed everything.”

“I wanted to make something that wouldn’t be directly influenced by the war, but then I understood it would be anyway. When we studied Ukrainian literature back at school, we used to complain about all these depressing, tragic stories. Now, we are bitterly joking that our life is like this 24/7,” he says.

Instead, Nakonechnyi is shooting a documentary for dance music platform Resident Advisor about Ukrainian electronic scene, called “Ukraine Underground,” and developing a short documentary set in the Kyiv Zoo.

“Butterfly Vision...

As the boundaries in cinema become increasingly fluid, emerging filmmakers whose films have been selected at the Cannes Film Festival have been discussing their journey from documentary to fiction at the Cannes Market’s Cannes Docs sidebar.

Curated by the Documentary Assn. of Europe, the panel on Sunday brought together Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechnyi, the director of Un Certain Regard title “Butterfly Vision,” and Erige Sehiri (“Railway Men”), the Tunisian director of “Under the Fig Leaves,” which had its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar.

The titles are fiction debuts for Nakonechnyi and Sehiri, who are both experienced documentary filmmakers.

Inspired by the conflict in Ukraine’s Eastern Donbas region that has been ongoing since 2014, “Butterfly Vision” is the story of a young Ukrainian soldier who returns home after being held captive for months and discovers she is pregnant after being raped by her Russian warden.

Nakonechnyi, whose credits...

Venice will announce its competition at the end of July.

Everyone hoping to go to the Venice Film Festival should sort their accommodation soon as Netflix is understood to be booking plenty of Lido digs in anticipation of another bumper festival.

Leading the Netflix charge are likely to be Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Mexico-set comedy Bardo and Noah Bambauch’s White Noise starring Greta Gerwig and Adam Driver. Sally El Hosaini’s Syrian refugee story The Swimmers, and Sebastian Lelio’s Ireland-set The Wonder, with Florence Pugh.

Pugh also stars in Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling with Harry Styles for Warner Bros,...

The festival is aware of the planned protest and is permitting it to take place, including the sirens.

The team behind Un Certain Regard title Butterfly Vision will stage a protest on the red carpet ahead of the film’s premiere tomorrow (Wednesday 25) in the Salle Debussy.

Director Maksym Nakonechnyi, producers Darya Bassel and Yelizaveta Smit, and lead actress Rita Burkovska will take to the steps to the noise of the air raid sirens that sound in Ukraine when a Russian attack is imminent.

These will play in place of the music that typically accompanies Cannes premieres, which is selected by the film team.

Ukrainian industry players gathered in Cannes are determined to show they can provide a variety of new content, as well as stories that look beyond the current Russian invasion.

“I have been repeating this since 2014 — it’s a trap to be only associated with war,” says producer Julia Sinkevych, now behind Marysia Nikitiuk’s upcoming feature “Lucky Girl.”

Presented at the Cannes Market as part of the Ukrainian Features Preview, it shows a successful TV star who has everything, until she is diagnosed with cancer.

As noted by Ukrainian Institute’s Natalie Movshovych, several projects focus on the 1990s, including “When We Were 15” — awarded at Meeting Point Vilnius in April — “Do You Love Me?” by Tonia Noyabriova, Philip Sotnychenko’s “Lapalissade” and “Rock. Paper. Grenade” by Iryna Tsilyk, also behind festival favorite “The Earth Is Blue as an Orange.”

“We have to show as much range as we can now.

Butterfly Vision (completed)

Director: Maksym Nakonechnyi

Producers: Darya Bassel, Yelizaveta Smith

Production: Tabor Productions, 4 Film, Masterfilm, Sisyfos

Sales: Wild Bunch

Lilia, held as a prisoner of war for months, finally returns home. But she is struggling to resume her life as a soldier and wife, while discovering she is pregnant.

Chrysanthemum Day

Director: Simon Mozgovyi

Producers: Alex Chepiga, Artem Koliubaiev

Production: Mainstream Pictures

Young doctor encounters an old woman, known as a healer, who mysteriously survives a nuclear explosion. But she loses her memory and identity along the way.

Company of Steel (documentary)

Director: Yuliia Hontaruk

Producers: Yuliia Hontaruk, Ivanna Khitsinska, Alexandra Bratyshchenko, Uldis Cekulis, Igor Savychenko

Production: Babylon’13, Directory Films

Three veterans return home and try to understand how to live as civilians. The film is an attempt to feel and see the world through the eyes of people who went through war.

Demons

Director: Natalya Vorozhbyt

Producers: Dmytro Minzianov,...

Maksym Nakonechnyi has been filming in zoos including in Kyiv and Odesa.

Ukrainian writer-director Maksym Nakonechnyi, whose debut feature Butterfly Vision screens in Un Certain Regard, is making a documentary about the plight of animals in Ukrainian zoos during the Russian invasion.

Nakonechnyi has been shooting Those Who Fill The Void With War (working title) in zoos including ones in Kyiv and Odesa. His aim is to keep on filming until visitors are able to return to the zoos, exploring how the animals react to the war and also look at the lives of those who stay to look after them.

Paris-based Celluloid Dreams has boarded Antonio Lukich’s upcoming feature “From Ukraine to Luxembourg,” currently in post-production and aiming to premiere in the fall.

The Ukrainian director debuted in 2019 with “My Thoughts Are Silent,” a dramedy about a sound recordist asked to record animal sounds from Western Ukraine. But here is the catch: his mother decides to join him. The film was awarded a Special Jury Prize at Karlovy Vary’s East of the West section.

In “From Ukraine to Luxembourg,” starring Ramil Nasirov, Amil Nasirov, Natalia Gnitii and Liumyla Sachenko, two twin brothers have to deal with the disappearance of their father. While one of them decides to follow his path as a small-time crook, the other becomes a cop. One day, they find out their long-lost father is allegedly living in Luxembourg.

“In his first film, Antonio explored his own relationship with his mother. Now, he is focusing...

"A remarkable documentary about this family's resilience and cinema's ability to be a means of escape." Film Movement has revealed an official US trailer for a documentary film titled The Earth is Blue as an Orange, made by the Ukrainian filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk. This was shot and made entirely before the current war in Ukraine, focusing on one family living in Eastern Ukraine in a region that was already occupied a few years earlier. Krasnohorivka: a town on the front lines. A single mother Anna and her four children are managing to keep their home as a safe haven, full of life and full of light. Every member of the family has a passion for cinema, it feels natural for them to shoot a film during this time. The creative process questions what kind of impact cinema might have during times of disaster, and how to picture war through a camera.

Maksym Nakonechnyi’s first feature revolves around a female Ukrainian soldier returning home after months of being held a prisoner in the Donbas.

Wild Bunch International (Wbi) has acquired world sales on Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechnyi’s drama Butterfly Vision ahead of its premiere in Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

The feature has also been acquired by Paris-based distribution and production company Nour Films for theatrical release in France.

Butterfly Vision is Nakonechnyi’s feature directorial debut and as such will also be in the running for the Caméra d’Or covering all the first...

The Cannes Film Marché has unveiled the full lineup of its Ukraine in Focus program which will provide Ukrainian filmmakers and producers with networking, pitching and co-financing opportunities over two days during the Cannes Film Festival, on May 21 and 22.

Under the program, key market initiatives such as Goes to Cannes, Cannes Docs Showcase and the Producers Network will be skewed towards projects and executives from Ukraine in order to support the country which was invaded by Russia on Feb. 24 and has been at war since then. Deadline first reported the news that Cannes was planning a focus on Ukraine program.

The Producers’ Network, organized in collaboration with the Ukrainian Institute, will include six producers, including Denis Ivanov from Arthouse Traffic, Darya Bassel from Moon Man, Natalia Libet from Digital Religion, Sashko Chubko from Pronto Film, Olga Beskhmelnytsina from Esse Production House and Vladimir Yatsenko from ForeFilms.

Docs in Progress, presented...

Belgium-based Iranian filmmaker Vida Dena’s debut feature documentary follows two Syrian girls adjusting to life in Brussels.

Paris-based sales agent Cat&Docs has acquired international rights to Visions du Réel competition title My Paper Life about two Syrian girls adjusting to a new life in Belgium.

The debut feature documentary of Belgium-based Iranian filmmaker Vida Dena will world premiere at the Swiss documentary film festival, running from April 7-17 in the lakeside town of Nyon.

My Paper Life centres on the two eldest daughters of a Syrian refugee family living in Brussels and their growing collection of drawings and dreams.

Organizers at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (Cph:dox), which is going ahead in-person for the first time in three years, are taking a stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine with a dedicated program of seven specially curated films.

Spirits may be high in the Danish capital at the prospect of finally having a live event after two editions that were pushed online due to the Covid-19 pandemic but, as the fest’s artistic director Niklas Engstrøm stressed, “All our thoughts go to Ukraine and the many refugees who are currently being forced to leave their homeland.”

As the event’s programmer, Mads Mikkelsen, explained to Variety, organizers had already put together a selection of films from or about Ukraine when they closed the program in late January. “But, of course, everything changed on February 24 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Up to the last minute, we added more films...

Festival line-up includes 84 world premieres.

Elizabeth, the feature documentary directed by the late Roger Michell, heads the programme of the 53rd edition of Switzerland’s Visions du Réel (VdR) film festival.

The film will play as a special screening out of competition at the non-fiction festival in Nyon. Elizabeth looks at the life of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-serving female head of state in history.

Elizabeth comes to VdR following a world premiere at Belgium’s Ostend Film Festival earlier this month.

It is produced by Kevin Loader for the UK’s Free Range Films, with Embankment Films handling sales...

Festival line-up includes 84 world premieres.

Elizabeth, the feature documentary directed by the late Roger Michell, will have its world premiere at the 53rd edition of Switzerland’s Visions du Réel (VdR) film festival.

The film will play as a special screening out of competition at the non-fiction festival in Nyon. Elizabeth looks at the life of Queen Elizabeth II, the longest-serving female head of state in history.

It is produced by Kevin Loader for the UK’s Free Range Films, with Embankment Films handling sales and Signature distributing in the UK and Ireland.

It is one of 84 world premieres on the VdR line-up,...

Documentary festival expands programme in solidary with war-torn country.

Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Cph:dox) has made three late additions of Ukrainian films to its line-up, as a mark of solidarity with the war-torn nation.

Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan, Iryna Tsilyk’s The Earth Is Blue As An Orange and Alina Gorlova’s This Rain Will Never Stop have been added to the programme of the festival, which will return as an in-person event from March 23 to April 3.

It brings Cph:dox’s dedicated programme of films that focus on Ukraine to seven, having previously selected Olha Zhurba’s Outside, Simon Lereng Wilmont...

Film Movement has acquired all North American rights to two previous Ukrainian Oscar entries “Bad Roads” and “Donbass,” as well as the Sundance award-winning documentary “The Earth Is Blue as an Orange.”

“Bad Roads,” which was Ukraine’s Oscar candidate last fall, marks the feature debut of playwright-turned-filmmaker, Natalya Vorozhbit. The politically minded omnibus film, which premiered at Venice in 2020, is adapted from Vorozhbit’s play and unfolds in the recently invaded Eastern region of Donbass.

“Bad Roads” features four stories shedding light on life in the front-line war zone of Donbass: one man alleging to be a schoolmaster is accosted by the military at a checkpoint, two teenagers wait for their soldier boyfriends in a dilapidated town square; a journalist is held captive and gets brutally assaulted; and a young woman apologizes to an elderly couple for running over their chickens.

Variety’s review said the film “gains extra...

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 23, filmmakers from both countries are speaking out against warfare.

Two-time Oscar-nominated producer Alexander Rodnyansky told Variety that he felt “unbearably ashamed” after learning of the attacks.

“I still couldn’t believe that missiles are exploding in Kyiv,” Rodnyansky said. “I couldn’t imagine that Kyiv, my native town, where my relatives, friends and colleagues live, where my parents and grandparents are buried, will be struck by missiles of the country where I have been living and working for the last 20 years, together with my family and friends.”

Rodnyansky additionally wrote in an Instagram post that he was mourning “all the people who woke up in war.”

Rodnyansky, who was born in Kyiv but currently lives in Moscow, captioned, “Today I know that the Ukrainians will come through this. Gentle and brave people will come through this war. Because they are fighting for their motherland.

David Lynch has officially weighed in on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Following Russia’s February 23 attack, Lynch used his daily “Weather Report” series on YouTube to share harsh words for Russian president Vladimir Putin. Watch Lynch’s full video below.

“If I could say something to Mr. President Putin, we are, as human beings, charged as to how we treat our fellow man. And there is a law of nature, a hard and fast law. There’s no loopholes, there’s no escaping it,” Lynch said. “And this law is: What you sow, you shall reap. And right now, Mr. Putin, you are sowing death and destruction, and it’s all on you.”

Lynch continued, “The Ukrainians didn’t attack your country. You went in and attacked their country. And all this death and destruction is going to come back and visit you.”

Now, the “Twin Peaks” creator likened...

As the people of Ukraine wake up to the reality of war, many of the country’s top filmmakers and industry professionals have issued statements pleading for international intervention.

Those contributing include Oleg Sentsov, the director and activist who spent years in Russian jail on charges that Amnesty International described as “fabricated,” Maryna Er Gorbach, whose credits include the 2022 Sundance and Berlin premiere Klondike, and Anna Machukh, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Film Academy and the Odesa International Film Festival.

With respect to the plight of those in the Ukrainian film business, after a night where Russia began an assault on the capital city Kyiv, Deadline has chosen to run each statement in full:

Collective statement:

“Today, Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. Now, more than ever, we need the help of the international community and anyone who understands that tomorrow war may be at your door. We’ve...

A group of prominent Ukrainian filmmakers has called for the world to wake up to the threat posed to democracy following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Eastern European country on Thursday.

An open letter was circulated Friday by filmmakers including: Oleh Sentsov, director of “Rhino”; Valentyn Vasyanovych, director of “Reflection” and “Atlantis”; Maryna Er Gorbach, director of “Klondike”; Anna Machukh, executive director of the Ukrainian Film Academy and Oiff; Natalia Vorozhbyt, director of ‘Bad Roads”; Iryna Tsilyk, director of “The Earth is Blue as an Orange”; and Nariman Aliev, director of “Homeward.”

“Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine. Now, more than ever, we need the help of the international community and anyone who understands that tomorrow war may be at your door. We’ve talked about the war in eastern Ukraine in our films for 8 years. You watched them at the festivals. But this is not a film,...

Iryna Tsilyk sensitively captures a family caught up in the conflict with Russia who are trying to make a film of their own

This sensitive and astute Sundance-winning documentary, in which Kyiv-based director and poet Iryna Tsilyk haunts the back alleys of the Russo-Ukrainian war, is the antidote to the warped propaganda-fest the conflict was depicted as in the 2018 film Donbass. It layers fact and fiction as delicately as an onion as it focuses on the Trofymchuk-Gladky family, who are attempting to shoot piecemeal their own fictional work, called 2014, based on their wartime experiences. But, here, artifice and cinema work entirely in the service of good. They are a source of self-expression and spiritual nourishment for Ukrainians beaten down by close to a decade of fighting.

Tsilyk mentored budding film-maker Myroslava Trofymchuk at a workshop, and it is the teenager we see here calling the shots for her family as...

Ukrainian filmmaker’s third feature was postponed due to five years imprisonment.

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov is to showcase footage from upcoming feature Rhino at Bulgaria’s Sofia Meetings, which is taking place virtually from March 17-24.

It marks the third feature from Sentsov and was originally pitched at the industry platform in 2012, before being abandoned when the filmmaker was arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service in May 2014 and later sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Sentsov resurrected the project after being released from prison as part of a prisoner exchange in September 2019.

Set in 1990s Ukraine, the drama centres on...

The documentary film community gathered virtually on Facebook Tuesday night to chat and cheer each other on at the annual Cinema Eye Honors Awards. Oscar ballots are due Wednesday at 5pm Pt, and many documentary branch voters were on the livestream.

At the start of the evening, as we waited for the pre-taped presentation to begin, “Crip Camp” nominee Jim Lebrecht congratulated “The Dissident” director Bryan Fogel for his BAFTA nomination that morning. International Documentary Association chief Simon Kilmurry was on the chat, along with Sundance artistic director Tabitha Jackson and Kirsten (Kj) Johnson.

She took home the directing prize for “Dick Johnson is Dead,” one of nine Netflix films nominated and among three winners for the streamer, including “Rolling Thunder Revue” and non-fiction short “Love Song for Latasha.”

Many filmmakers sent in videos introducing themselves, from Martin Scorsese in New York (“Rolling Thunder Revue” won an editing award) and...

The documentary film community gathered virtually on Facebook Tuesday night to chat and cheer each other on at the annual Cinema Eye Honors Awards. Oscar ballots are due Wednesday at 5pm Pt, and many documentary branch voters were on the livestream.

At the start of the evening, as we waited for the pre-taped presentation to begin, “Crip Camp” nominee Jim Lebrecht congratulated “The Dissident” director Bryan Fogel for his BAFTA nomination that morning. International Documentary Association chief Simon Kilmurry was on the chat, along with Sundance artistic director Tabitha Jackson and Kirsten (Kj) Johnson.

She took home the directing prize for “Dick Johnson is Dead,” one of nine Netflix films nominated and among three winners for the streamer, including “Rolling Thunder Revue” and non-fiction short “Love Song for Latasha.”

Many filmmakers sent in videos introducing themselves, from Martin Scorsese in New York (“Rolling Thunder Revue” won an editing award) and...

The Romanian film “Collective” has been named the best nonfiction film of 2020 at the 13th annual Cinema Eye Honors, a New York-based awards show devoted to all facets of documentary filmmaking.

Kirsten Johnson took the directing prize for “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” while the award for outstanding debut went to Garrett Bradley for “Time,” which also won for its editing.

“Boys State” won the Audience Award, the only Cinema Eye Honor category in which the public was invited to cast ballots.

The Spotlight Award, which was designed to put attention on a film that deserves wider exposure, went to “The Earth is Blue as an Orange,” directed by Iryna Tsilyk. The Heterodox Award, given to a film that combines nonfictional and fictional techniques, was won by Bill and Turner Ross’ “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets.”

“The Truffle Hunters” won for cinematography, while “Feels Good Man” won in the graphic design or...

Samir Guesmi’s movie walks away with the French festival’s Grand Prize, while other prize winners include Paloma Sermon-Daï’s Petit samedi and Iryna Tsilyk’s The Earth is Blue as an Orange. Victory at the 33rd Angers European Premiers Plans Film Festival (organised online on account of the health crisis) was claimed by Ibrahim, directed by France’s Samir Guesmi to whom the jury presided over by Pierre Salvadori awarded the European feature film competition’s Grand Prize. The first feature film helmed by actor Samir Guesmi, Ibrahim has already earned itself the 2020 Cannes Film Festival’s Official Selection label, as well as triumphing at the Angoulême Film Festival and walking away with Rome’s Alice nella Città Golden Camera Award. Produced by Why Not and sold worldwide by Wild Bunch, Ibrahim stars Abdel Benhader, Samir...