Leading Ukrainian filmmaker Maksym Nakonechnyini, whose Butterfly Vision premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes last year, has revealed further details of his ambitious Ukraine war documentary, The Days I Would Like To Forget, which won one of the main industry awards at April’s Visions Du Reel.
The documentary is being co-directed as a collective project by Nakonechnyini, Alina Gorlovka, Simon Mozgovyi and Yelizaveta Smit and is being made through Tabor, the Kyiv-based production company run by a group of young artists and filmmakers. It looks at the Russian-Ukrainian war from multiple different angles. Nakonechnyini himself has just been filming footage of the trial of two Russian soldiers accused of torturing Ukrainian citizens early during the Russian occupation of part of the country last year.
Nakonechnyini said the film is being made as a trilogy that could be released as either one or three films. One part with the working title, Human And War, will depict the “anthropological aspect” of the war, looking at how human behaviour is being changed by the conflict. The second is called Death And Life and will look at how death has become present in everyday life for Ukrainians. The third part is Space And Time and will examine how war “spreads much, much wider than the battlefields; how it affects not only the front line cities but the whole of Ukraine and how war affects foreign countries”, said the director.
The documentary will include material of everything from the exhumation of dead bodies at Bucha to the disputes over grain production, from the plight of zoo animals after the war started to the work of volunteers.
The hope is to have the project ready by 2024 and for it to screen as in museums as well as cinemas.
“We are also thinking more about the visual arts, museum and gallery/art space distribution - to screen it as a visual arts work not only as a cinema work and we want to work on the marriage of these two fields,” said the director.
At Visions du Reel, the film was pitched by Alina Gorlova as part of the industry pitching event. It won the Vision du Sud Est prize, worth 10,000 Swiss francs ($11,200) for the leading project from the South (Africa, Latin America and Asia) or Eastern Europe.
The Austrian co-producer is Ralph Wieser of Vienna-based Mischief Films while the French co-producer is Paris-based Les Valseurs.
Funding challenges
As state funding is now unavailable in Ukraine, the country’s filmmakers are reliant on European backers. Like other Tabor projects, The Days I Would Like To Forget, has received development support through the initiative set up by Netflix with Germany’s DFFB, IDFA Bertha Fund, the German Film Academy and the Goteborg Film Fund.
“Thankfully there are a lot of micro-grant programmes for documentaries and Ukrainian artists who are depicting and capturing the war,” said Nakonechnyini.
He observed Tabor was just “getting by” and “reaching out for the basic support.”
“There is a demand within the international professional community for us to keep working for which we are very grateful,” he explained. “When it comes more to running the production company as a business entity, well, that’s another question. This international support allows us to have the cash flow to keep [the company] going but definitely not to generate any income so far. But I guess once we have a few more fresh productions finished and starting their festival and sales circuit, maybe the situation is going to change.”
Busy slate
Several further Tabor productions are moving forward. Mariia Ponomarova’s Nice Ladies, about elderly cheerleaders from Kharkov, is at rough-cut stage and was recently selected for DokIckubator.
Fragments Of Ice, directed by Maria Stoianova, suffered a tragic reversal when its editor Viktor Onysko died on the battlefield in the Donetsk region late last December. A new editor has now been appointed and the project is close to completion. “We really want to finish it soon and release it this year hopefully,” said Nakonechnyini.
Tabor is also involved in Silent Flood, the documentary from Pamfir director, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk. This is in late development and also received support via the Netflix/Ukrainian Film Academy initiative.
Additionally, Nakonechnyini has launched an online 45- minute documentary Ukraine: Nightlife In Resistance. The film looks at how leading Ukrainian music producers, DJs, club owners, staff, promoters and curators have fared since last year’s Russian invasion - and at how they are attempting to keep Ukrainian nightlife going in spite of the war.
The project was commissioned from Nakonechnyini and Tabor by multi-media platform Resident Advisor which champions electronic music. Pre-war, the Ukrainian nightlife and electronic music scene had been “evolving rapidly,” according to Nakonechnyini. After the invasion, the clubbing scene was stopped in its tracks. However, the scene has been reviving in recent months, albeit with strict limitations.
“Now, we see [the clubbing scene] obviously has survived,” says Nakonechnyini. “It has adjusted and has even benefited from becoming much more involved into social issues and in the life of the society. People found their motivation to listen to music again, to make music again, to dance again, to get together again…people get this relief using different mediums - music, dance, social interaction, some substances. The vibe was very outstanding even before the invasion. Now, it is different but still very special.”
Clubgoers, Nakonechnyini points out, “cannot forget the war totally, especially when you have your personal connections…no-one forgets the war. That is why the parties are very moderate but, at the same time, everyone is still craving this fun much more. This party literally can be the last one for you. It is no metaphor any more.”
Nightclubs now open in the daytime. They have to close one hour before curfew which falls at midnight in Kyiv. Any nightclub event raises funds for the ongoing war effort or for war-related charities.
“We are questioning ourselves all the time do we have the right to enjoy music, to enjoy communication and interaction with each other when the tragedy [of the war] is going on. On the other hand, the need for that is much higher than at any time because it is way to have some relief.”
The documentary is now streaming on the Resident Adviksor YouTube channel.
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