October 21, 2020 – October 28, 2020
The fifth edition of Ukrainian Film Festival in Warsaw will be held on October 21-28 in Kino Iluzjon. The program of this year’s edition, which will also be held online, includes screenings of the latest Ukrainian films and side-events.
Ukrainian cinema is having a lot of interest from international festivals, film critics and viewers, and the last five years have been the most fruitful time in Ukrainian cinema since 1991.
We want to break with the stereotype of unleavened Ukraine, where cut-outs and folk costumes are the highest level of export art. Contemporary Ukrainian art has much more to offer, and we talk about it through the language of the film, the organizers say about the festival.
This year’s event will open with the latest film by Oleg Sentsov, “Numbers”. The world as an absurdly abstract one-room cosmos. Ten figures are practising daily rituals, walking in circles. They do not know who they are or where they come from, nor do they have names. The men wear odd numbers, the women even numbers. Their dating behaviour, like everything else, is subject to rules that are as strict as they are pointless. An omnipresent, godlike leader (“The Great Zero”) surveys the goings-on; judges are armed. This is a system of governance that leads to the elimination of all independence – but then an unplanned child disturbs the order. The time is ripe again for dystopian stories.
The production of this film was an interesting experience for me – I worked on it remotely, using letters sent from the prison. This is my manifesto, says Sentsov. The film, based on his own play, was directed from behind the bars of a Russian labor camp.
The program also includes the well-received film by female director Iryna Tsilyk, “The Earth is Blue Like an Orange”, awarded at the Sundance Film Festival. Tsilyk documents the lives of a single mother Anna and her four children in eastern Ukraine. To deal with the daily trauma of living in a war zone, Anna and her children are shooting a film together about their life in Donbas.
The festival will also feature historical productions, recently popular in Ukrainian cinema.
The guests of the festival will be Ukrainian and Polish filmmakers who will take part in meetings with viewers – both in the cinema and online: director Iryna Tsilyk (“The Earth is blue like an orange”) and Daria Onyshchenko (“Forgotten”) and the director of the film “Cherkasy”, Tymur Yashchenko. The program includes a number of side-events, such as classes for children, a debate, an exhibition of photographs, meetings with filmmakers and a screening of Alexander Dovzhenko’s silent film “Earth” with live music performed by the band Bastarda Trio.
Within four years, the festival has become a recognizable event for the residents of Warsaw, and since last year also of Lublin. Previous editions have shown how strong is the need for mutual conversation and understanding. We want the festival to symbolically build a bridge between Poles and Ukrainians, to be an opportunity for partnership talk and fun together, say the organizers.
After the end of the festival in the cinema, from November 2nd to November 9th, films from this year’s repertoire will be available online on the platform www.mojeekino.pl