One of Ukraine’s most renowned film directors, Mykhailo Illienko, knows better than anybody what a struggle it is to shoot a movie in Ukraine.
For the last two years Illienko, 67, has been trying to produce “Toloka,” a film adaptation of a ballad by Ukrainian literature colossus Taras Shevchenko. Unfortunately for Illienko, state funding dried up midway through shooting.
Before that, Illienko had the same struggle when making “Firecrosser” (2011), an adventure biopic about a Ukrainian joining American Indians. “Firecrosser” production was postponed several times for financial reasons and it took nearly five years to complete. Once released, it was a success.
After the release of “Firecrosser” Illienko was optimistic and scheduled “Toloka” to hit the screens in autumn 2014. But the filming that began in 2012 has stopped after less than a year due to lack of funding.
The budget of “Toloka” may seem tiny by Western film standards, but it proved hard to fund. Most of the Hr 28 million budget was provided by state. To collect an essential missing share of Hr 2 million Illienko put a call to public at www.biggggidea.com, a Ukrainian alternative to KickStarter crowdfunding platform. But in 90 days the pitch received slightly more than Hr 26,000, so the production still stumbles.
It failed to impress the backers that “Toloka” is the first adaptation of a work by Shevchenko in 23 years of Ukraine’s independent history.
Illienko is not surprised that the crowdfunding attempt failed.
“War is not the best time to look for money for cinema,” he told the Kyiv Post. “But what I’m trying to explain is that we are not making a movie. We are making the missing weapon.”
Illienko says that while Russia invests in the local movie industry and Ukraine doesn’t, it gives Russia an advantage. This lapse, he says, was one of the reasons behind the successful annexation of Crimea.
Production of the movies like “Toloka,” he thinks, might shift the situation to better.
Shevchenko’s “Toloka” is a story of young girl Kateryna who, under false pretenses, asks three Cossacks to rescue her lover from Turkish slavery. In the end this deception costs Kateryna her life.
But Illienko’s interpretation of the story is quite liberal. Borrowing the plot of the ballad, he used it to build a story of Ukraine’s development. It takes place in modern day Ukraine as well as the times of Cossacks. At one point, its trailer shows a Soviet-era car Zaporozhets flying. And during the forced break Illienko plans to add find the way to build Ukraine’s war with Russia-backed separatists into the movie.
Two leading actors of “Toloka” are the same that starred in “Firecrosser” – Dmitry Linartovych and Ivanna Illienko, the daughter of the director. Vitaly Linetsky, an actor who took the role of one of the three Cossacks, has suddenly died in 2013, after the shooting went on break.
The movie’s name, “Toloka,” is a Ukrainian tradition of mutual aid. When a villager needed a home, he could call up a toloka – meaning that all the villagers would leave their business and work together to build the house in one day. In Illienko’s interpretation, the way Ukraine is constantly rebuilding itself after attacks and enslaving attempts is similar to toloka.
Illienko hopes to complete and screen “Toloka” as soon as he finds the funding, but has no release date in mind yet. To support the movie, one can donate through www.biggggidea.com.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuliana Romanyshyn can be reached at [email protected].
