You're reading: Film about teens from war-torn Donbas to premiere at Berlin film festival

A new documentary called “Shkola Nomer 3” (School Number 3) about teens living in the eastern Ukraine is to have its world premiere at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, the Berlinale, on Feb. 15.

The film, which was co-produced by Ukraine and Germany, is part of the Generation 14 plus program – a special competition at the Berlinale for films devoted to children and young people. The film will compete in for a Crystal Bear and a money prize of 7,500 euros.

“Shkola Nomer 3” was directed by Yelizaveta Smith and Georg Genoux, and features the lives of 13 adolescents from the small city of Mykolaivka in Donetsk oblast in the eastern Ukraine.

The film is built on monologues by the teens, whose lives have been affected by war in various ways. In parallel, the authors of the film show the everyday life of an average 13-16-year-old: how they hang out, stroll through picturesque fields, and listen to Radiohead when they’re sad.

In summer 2014, Mykolaivka was shelled during fighting for Sloviansk, a town just 11 kilometers away. In December 2014, Smith came to the east as a volunteer of the “Novyi Donbas” (New Donbas) initiative to help locals to rebuild Mykolaivka’s local school, School Number 3, which was almost destroyed by shelling.

Apart from building, the activists also worked with children: Smith, together with children and other volunteers, staged a play devoted to Saint Nicholas Day. It was then that she met Genoux – the co-founder of the prominent Russian modern theater Theatre.doc in Moscow, and the artistic director of the Kyiv-based Theatre of Displaced People documentary theater.

Genoux and Ukrainian dramatist Natalia Vorozhbyt were working on a documentary play called “My Mykolaivka” based on monologues by the teens in which they reveal their hopes, dreams and fears, and “Shkola Nomer 3” is based on this play. The filming lasted from the winter of 2014 until the spring of 2016.

Smith told the Kyiv Post on Feb. 10 that viewers wouldn’t see any ruined buildings or military action in the film, but feel the presence of the war through the stories shared by teens.

A girl looks through the binoculars at Mykolaivka city in "Shkola Number 3" documentary. (Courtesy)

A girl looks through the binoculars at Mykolaivka city in “Shkola Number 3” documentary. (Courtesy)

“I think that these guys are much more mature than their peers because they had to contemplate things that even some adults have never thought about,” Smith said. “For example, about whether they would be able to kill somebody.”

However, Smith said that the film touches upon various topics that are universal to adolescents from any country. Initially, Genoux asked the teens to bring a thing without which they wouldn’t leave Mykolaivka and discuss it, but they ended up talking about their dreams to change the world, relationships with parents, first loves, and desire to travel.

“We haven’t seen anything apart from Mykolaivka,” one of the teens, Ivan Shilo, says in the film. “Now it feels like we live on Mars, because we still don’t know anything about this world.”

Luckily for the teens, some of those dreams came true after the directors submitted their film to the Berlinale. The film crew managed to find donors and most of the teens who starred in a documentary are traveling to Berlin for the premiere.

Smith says that the film will never be screened online because it’s too personal for the teens, but she plans to screen it at various film festivals in Ukraine and abroad.

“This film is about all those things that 13- to 16-year-olds are concerned about. Actually, not only them – but everybody is concerned about,” Smiths said.

“Adults just close off (those feelings) or pretend they don’t care – but teens wear their hearts on their sleeves.”

“Shkola Nomer 3” will be screened three times during the Berlin Film Festival:

Feb. 15. 8 p.m. House of World Cultures (John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin, Germany). € 5.50

Feb. 16. 3.30 p.m. Cubix 8 (Rathausstr. 1, 10178 Berlin, Germany). € 5.50

Feb. 18. 5.30 p.m. CinemaxX (Potsdamer Str.5/Eingang Voxstr., 10785, Berlin, Germany). € 5.50