You're reading: Molodist directors compare Ukraine, Austria filmmaking

Right before  “Sickfuckpeople” (2013), an Austrian documentary by a Ukrainian director, screened at the ongoing Molodist film festival in Kyiv on Oct. 21, Ukraine was generously added to the credits at the end in the list of countries of production.

“We just wanted Ukraine there, after all the movie was shot in Ukraine and for Ukraine,” says Juri Rechynsky, the director.

By that time, the Austrian-funded documentary about street people in Ukraine already won a  Heart of Sarajevo, the main prize at Sarajevo International Film Festival.

Rechynsky says his home country provided nothing for his film, except plenty of material. “Sickfuckpeople” is about a small group of homeless people who are residing in a basement of an apartment building in Odesa.

The short version of the movie, 42 minutes long, came out in 2010 and was funded by the director himself since no other financing was available. “I ran out of money but I understood that there was a lot more to shoot,” Rechynsky explains.

The short version was presented at Molodist Film Festival and Docu Days Festival in Kyiv, and other festivals in Moscow and Madrid. “After that, suddenly three Austrian producers came and suggested making a cinema version, which means 72 minutes minimum,” Rechynsky says proudly.

Austria has now become Rechynsky’s base, while Ukraine remains a destination for harvesting material. He says Austrian producers, unlike Ukrainian,  give him complete artistic freedom.  “(They) don’t try to offer money for implementing their ideas,” he says.

Austrian director Ulrich Seidi says one day Ukraine’s film industry will shine.

Ulrich Seidl, a famous  Austrian film director, whose retrospective is also screening at this year’s Molodist film festival, remembers shooting his own feature movie, “Import. Export,” in Ukraine in 2006.

“I travelled all over the country from west to east and picked the east, Luhansk region,” he says. The film features life of ordinary people showing the difference between Eastern and Western Europe. “It could be any European country – Moldova, Romania, Czech Republic, but Ukraine appeared to be the longest way from the West.”

The movie tells a story of a nurse from Ukraine who leaves her homeland for Austria in search of a better life, while an unemployed man from Austria heads east for the same reason.

The Ukrainian audience got only a short glimpse of this movie, and has no chance to see  “Sickfuckpeople” at all because it’s so far from the mainstream films favored by cinema chains.

“We have found distributors for Balkan countries, but if we talk about Ukraine – I don’t see a chance to screen the movie even in a single Ukrainian cinema,” Rechynsky says. The film will soon travel to more international film festivals and will be screened in Austrian cinemas starting Nov. 6.

Seidl gives high praise to the film, but says Ukrainian cinema in general is having hard times.

“There is a great potential in Ukraine, huge film studios, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the arrival of the powerful American cinema the strong filmmaking tradition you had here just broke down and you just didn’t have time or money to produce a lot of new stuff,” he says. “After all, money is a problem in all the countries and everyone stands for oneself and dies alone in filmmaking.”

His own problems were quite different when he was shooting in Ukraine in 2006. “We had to shoot at 40 degrees below zero, people said then it was the most severe winter since the Stalingrad occupation,” he jokes.

Rechynsky, however, believes that lack of information is a problem for successful movie-making and distribution in Ukraine. He says looking at the audience of Molodist festival, which is taking place for the 43rd time in Kyiv between Oct. 19-27, he can see that there are not so many people interested in art house films. But he is optimistic about the quality of Ukrainian movies, though mostly shorts have been the most successful thus far.

“Let’s wait, good feature films will also come,” Rechynsky says.

Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected]