Iryna Tsilyk’s Red Zone received a special €20,000 Eurimages development award at CPH:DOX, as part of the CPH:Forum industry winners on March 23.
The first-time award was given in support of and solidarity with the Ukrainian film industry, to the best pitch by a Ukrainian film.
It was selected by jurors Emma Scott, head of distribution and short film production at Screen Ireland, plus producers Rikke Tambo Andersen of Tambo Film and Heino Deckert Makri of ma.je.de.
The jurors praised an “innovative look at the inner lives of women as they go about their daily lives with humour and courage while in the midst of a terrifying war.”
Ukrainian productions and co-productions comprised 12% of the 44 projects across the Forum, Work-in-Progress and Change industry lineup.
Red Zone is produced by Darya Bassel for her Ukrainian firm Moon Man. Tsilyk previously directed The Earth Is Blue As An Orange, which won the world cinema – documentary directing award at Sundance 2020; and 2022 feature Rock Paper Grenade. Bassel was a co-producer on Oscar-nominated documentary A House Made Of Splinters; and produced Maksym Nakonechnyi’s Cannes 2022 title Butterfly Vision, for which Tsilyk co-wrote the script.
Fire zone
The Ukrainian prize was given in addition to the regular €20,000 Eurimage co-production development award for best CPH:Forum pitch, which this year was awarded to Robin Petre’s Denmark-Spain co-production Only On Earth.
The jury noted “a visually stunning project, that brought us to a place where nature is burning, climate change is evident, but hope is to be found between humans and animals.”
Produced by Signe Skov Thomsen and Malene Flindt Pedersen for Denmark’s Hansen & Pedersen, Only On Earth follows a journey into one of Europe’s hottest fire zones in Galicia, where wild horses excel at fire prevention – but are starting to disappear in the clash between humans and nature.
The Forum presented another new award, the doc award for best French majority or minority co-production, awarded by Unifrance and TitraFilm.
The prize of €2,300 in post-production support and €1,590-value Unifrance membership went to Yegor Troyanovsky’s Cuba & Alaska, produced by Olha Beskhmelnytsina for Ukraine’s 2Brave Productions and Christian Popp for France’s TAG Film.
The project depicts the eponymous two young women sharing good humour and a belief in victory while working as paramedics in Ukraine’s war-torn Kharkiv region.
The CPH:DOX festival competition awards, including for the main Dox:Award section, will be handed out this evening (March 24), with the festival closing on Sunday, March 26.
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