The Kyiv Post looks back at what Ukrainians have achieved in culture, art, music, and sports in the past year.
DakhaBrakha on BBC
In September, the Ukrainian ethno-chaos band DakhaBrakha appeared on British television’s leading music show “Later…with Jools Holland” on BBC Two. The band performed their song “Sho Z Pod Duba.” Footage of DakhaBrakha’s performance racked up almost 80,000 views on BBC’s YouTube channel. In their comments, YouTube users described the Ukrainian band’s singing as “amazing” and said they have “so much vocal talent.”
Ukrainian teenager wins San Remo Song Contest
Ukrainian Sofia Tarasova, 14, won the famous San Remo Junior International Song and Music Contest in Italy in April. She performed “Please, Do Not Make Me Love You,” accompanied by a symphony orchestra. She won both the contest’s Grand Prix and first place overall in the competition. “I was singing from my heart for Ukraine, and I proved that Ukrainians are a most songful and talented nation,” she said.
Sotheby’s $5 million sale
“Study of a Sleeping Girl,” a painting by the Ukrainian-French artist Zinaida Seberiakova from the early 20th century, was the sensation of Sotheby’s London auction house this June when the artwork sold for more than $5 million. In 1924, the same painting had been purchased for $500.
Vyshyvanka enters world of high fashion
This year the Ukrainian vyshyvanka, a traditional embroidered blouse or shirt, became a hot fashion trend. Celebrities and street-style stars like Anna Dello Russo and Miroslava Duma wore vyshyvanka dresses from Ukrainian designer Vita Kin. Valentino also used Ukrainian ethnic motifs in his haute couture spring-summer 2015 collection.
Miss Deaf World
In July, Natalia Belan, 18, became the winner of the 2015 Miss Deaf World beauty pageant. This year 60 young women with hearing disabilities from around the globe took part in the contest.
Little Miss World
Daria Zhurbenko, 8, won the Little Miss World 2015 title at the international children’s festival in Turkey. Zhurbenko beat 41 rivals from 25 countries for the honor.
Usyk named WBO Fighter of the Year
Undefeated Ukrainian WBO cruiserweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, 28, was named Intercontinental Fighter of the Year by the World Boxing Organization at the professional boxing sanctioning body’s convention in Orlando, Florida on Oct. 27. Usyk sports a Cossack-style haircut, and after winning the gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics, he performed a hopak Cossack folk dance.
Soccer star Konoplyanka joins Seville FC
In July, Yevhen Konoplyanka, the star midfielder of soccer club Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk, signed a four-year contract with the Spanish club Seville. The Spanish club described Konoplyanka as “one of the jewels of European football” in an online statement. Konoplyanka has two goals and four assists so far in the Spain’s domestic league this season.
8-year-old wins European Junior Chess Championship
Veronika Veremyuk, an 8-year-old schoolgirl from Kyiv, won the European Chess Championship in the junior category. She won eight chess matches during the competition, which was held in Croatia in September, and was personally congratulated on her victory by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Wrestlers triumph
Ukrainian professional wrestlers Zhan Belenyuk and Oksana Gergel this year topped the lists of best fighters of 2015 in their respective categories. In December, United World Wrestling named Gergel the best freestyle wrestler in the world in the 60-kilogram category, and Belenyuk the Greco-Roman wrestler of the year. Both are world champions in their categories.
National soccer team qualifies for Euro 2016
After beating Slovenia during a qualifying match in November, Ukraine’s national soccer team booked a spot in next year’s European soccer championship that France is hosting for one month starting on June 10.
This is the first time the Ukrainian national soccer competitively team has qualified for the finals – in 2012, the blue-and-yellows automatically qualified as a co-host of the tournament.
Success of “The Tribe”
The Hollywood Reporter placed the Ukrainian sign language drama “The Tribe” number one in its list of Top 10 films of 2015. The movie was released in 2014, but its trail of festival successes continued through 2015. It was shown at 30 festivals and became the first-ever Ukrainian movie to be shown in the U.S. in 50 commercial theaters, rather than at festivals.
“Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom”
The Netflix documentary “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s fight for freedom” on the EuroMaidan Revolution was co-produced in Ukraine, the United States and United Kingdom. Since October, it has been viewed by more than 2 million people on Netflix. It has a 100-percent rating on the movie critics’ website Rotten Tomatoes.
It’s also the first movie made with the participation of Ukraine to be shortlisted for an Oscar.
“Unbroken” biopic
“Unbroken,” screened in Russia as “The Battle for Sevastopol,” is a $5 million biopic about the exploits of Ukrainian woman sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko in the Second World War. The movie was co-produced by Ukraine and Russia, and co-financed by state agencies in both countries.
Russian actress Yulia Peresild played the role of Pavlichenko. The original title “The Battle for Sevastopol” was changed to “Unbroken” for the movie’s domestic run in Ukraine to avoid associations with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. It is the most expensive movie ever made in Ukraine, and took in $8 million at the box office.
“The Russian Woodpecker”
Yahoo Movies put this rather strange documentary at 38th place in their Top 40 best movies of the year rating. The movie, co-produced by the United States, the United Kingdom and Ukraine, follows Ukrainian artist Fedor Alexandrovich as he probes a conspiracy theory about the real cause of the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear plant in 1986.
The film received the grand jury prize of the Sundance Film Festival for “innovative filmmaking on a bold scale.”
