You're reading: Foreign filmmakers who focus on Ukraine

Ukraine’s revolution and war have put the nation in the spotlight internationally, and foreign filmmakers are now turning their lenses on the country’s recent events, as well as its history.

Canadian, French and Lithuanian directors have been working on feature films about Ukraine since 2014: two movies about Ukraine were made in Canada this year.

Filmmaker George Mendeluk, who made the TV shows “Highlander” and “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys,” is currently doing post-production work on “The Devil’s Harvest,” a historical drama about a Ukrainian family’s trials under the Soviet regime.

Mendeluk, a Canadian-Ukrainian, tells the story of artist Yuriy, whose parents are awaiting exile to Siberia. The life of his beloved Natalya is also in danger, as the Holodomor, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s man-made famine of 1932-33, claims millions of lives.

“I grew up with my mother describing how she and her family survived the terror of the Holodomor… at a time when the world looked the other way,” Mendeluk told movie website ramascreen.com. “As you see in today’s media, (Stalin’s) long shadow stills affects Ukraine today, but our story is essentially one of love triumphing over all that life throws at it.”

“Hacker,” another Canadian indie-drama by Kazakh movie director Akan Satayev, will also be in movie theaters by the end of this year.

The protagonist of the movie, Alex Danylyuk, a young migrant from Ukraine, joins a team of cyber-criminals, at first to help his impoverished parents. But he soon gets sucked into darker business. The film is based on the true story of a group of Ukrainians and Russians who steal credit card data. The fraud scheme was exposed in the United States two years ago.

Other movies about Ukraine in the works include one by Lithuanian filmmaker Sharunas Bartas, who presented his idea during the Odessa International Film Festival this summer. Teaming up with Ukrainian producer Valeriy Kalmykov, Bartas is to make a film about a Lithuanian volunteer in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Shooting of the film, entitled “Frost,” is planned for May. “Frost” producer Kalmykov said Bartas is still working on the script.

It will be the second movie by the Lithuanian director about Ukraine. In 2005, after the Orange Revolution, he made “Seven Invisible Men,” a film about life in post-Soviet Crimea.

Meanwhile, French filmmaker Jerome Enrico is taking a lighter look at Ukraine in his comedy “Cerise.”
The film tells the story of a spoiled and eccentric French girl Cerise. Tired of her rebelliousness, Cerise’s Ukrainian migrant mother decides to send her to Ukraine for re-education to her father, whom she has never met. Used to a comfortable life in France, the pink-haired Cerise is shocked by Ukraine, its misery and constant political strife.

Cerise first heads to a Ukrainian village to visit her grandmothers and then gets involved in the EuroMaidan Revolution, where she volunteers to work in a kitchen preparing food for protesters.
The premier of “Cerise” was in April in France.

Ukrainian film critic and Oscar committee member Volodymyr Voitenko isn’t surprised foreign filmmakers are intrigued by Ukraine, and are finding creative inspiration here.

“For some (foreigners) Ukraine is still a sort of a terra incognita, where two-headed men might live,” he told the Kyiv Post. “So cinematographers try to explore the country in the best way they can – by making movies.”

Kyiv Post writer Veronika Melkozerova can be reached at [email protected]