You're reading: Ukrainian-Turkish love story to hit the screens in February

Things can turn funny when a foreigner is dropped into a completely alien culture. Maryna Yer Horbach, 32, took that idea, added an inter-ethnic love story and turned the concoction into a movie.

So, this February, “Love Me,” a Ukrainian-Turkish produced movie, will hit the screens. It is a love story about a Ukrainian woman and Turkish man, mostly set in Kyiv, but with two scenes taking place in Turkey.

Horbach, a Kyiv-born film director who has been living in Istanbul since 2008, says she nursed the idea of making a movie based on a love story with a foreigner for the past seven years. When she married a Turkish citizen, the nationality of the foreigner character in the movie was no longer a question.

The film’s protagonist, 34-year-old Olexandra, a Ukrainian beauty played by actress Victoria Spesivtseva, doesn’t need to earn a living. She is a mistress of a rich Russian businessman, who generously takes care of her financial needs, but is far from a dream boyfriend. So when Olexandra meets Cemal, a tourist from Turkey visiting Kyiv for a weekend of fun, she goes out of her way to catch the opportunity for a real romance.

With a newly-found girlfriend, Cemal dives into the city life and discovers the striking differences between luxurious apartments on Pechersk and regular dwellings of the Troyeshchyna area. One of Cemal’s adventures even takes him to the police station.

“The film includes the story of three generations – the main character, her mother and grandmother,” says Horbach. “The generation of the heroine – my generation – grew up in constant soul-searching. This is not in the foreground in the movie, but it’s still an important side of it.”

The film cost Hr 14 million to produce, with half of this sum provided by the publicly financed Cinema Foundation of Ukraine, and the other half by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Horbach’s husband and producer.

“Love Me” is expected to hit the screens in Kyiv in February. The movie has been screening in Turkey since October and received the Best Film award at FerFilm Festival in Kosovo.