A Ukrainian film will be released, which the Hollywood Reporter called “a blow to the breath”

A Ukrainian film will be released, which the Hollywood Reporter called “a blow to the breath”

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From August 31, Ukrainian cinemas will be able to watch the documentary “20 Days in Mariupol” by Pulitzer Prize laureate Mstislav Chernov. The film was created by international journalists of the Associated Press, who remained in Mariupol surrounded by the occupiers. They filmed the siege of the city from the very attack of Russian troops on the morning of February 24, 2022. Despite the danger to their lives, the team continued to work under siege and captured footage that later became the defining images of the war: the deaths of children, mass burials, a bombed maternity hospital and other horrors of Russian crimes. The film first saw the light of day at Sundance – one of the main independent film festivals in the USA – in the World Cinema Documentary Competition section. The tape won the Audience Award. The Ukrainian premiere took place at the Docudays UA festival, where “20 Days in Mariupol” became the Best Film of the National Competition, as well as the winner of the Audience Award. The film “20 days in Mariupol” shows the city under siege. Photo: still from the film About the director Mstislav Chernov is a war correspondent with experience working in Syria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Libya, Iraq, the Gaza Strip, Afghanistan – a photographer, videographer and writer. “20 Days in Mariupol” is his directorial debut. Together with photographer Yevhen Maloletka and producer and journalist Vasilisa Stepanenko, he received the Pulitzer Prize, which is considered the most prestigious in the field of journalism, for his work in the besieged Mariupol. Mstislav Chernov was in Mariupol during the siege of the city. Photo: press service Team awards Mstislav Chernov and Yevhen Maloletka became laureates of international awards, including Deutsche Welle Freedom of Speech Award (Germany), Knight International Journalism Awards (USA), Biagio Agnes Award (Italy), Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award (France), as well as the Ukrainian Heorhiy Gongadze Award and the “Ukrainian Pravda” Award. Awards and ratings of the film “20 Days in Mariupol” were awarded at the Cleveland International Film Festival (USA), DocAviv (Israel), Sheffield DocFest (Great Britain), DocEdge (New Zealand), Cinema for Peace Awards (Germany) and the Royal Television Society ( United Kingdom). Film critics and viewers received the film positively: on the website Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a 100% rating and the “Certified Freshness” award, which is awarded to films with the best reviews. The rating on the IMDb platform is 8.5, on Metacritic it is 83 points with the Must See mark. The bombed-out maternity hospital was filmed in the picture. Photo: frame from the film What was written about the film abroad Foreign mass media have already written about the film. Thus, the Los Angeles Times noted that the picture “captivates attention”, The Hollywood Reporter compared it to “a blow to the breath”, and Harper’s Bazaar wrote that “seeing Chernov’s film is everyone’s human duty”. The Ukrainian publication NV called the tape “light against darkness in the information battle”, and Lirum noted that it is “definitely a journalistic feat”. About documentary film in Ukraine At the Docudays UA International Festival, which took place in Kyiv from May 31 to June 9, a public talk was held about documentary film during a full-scale war, where, in particular, a major problem with the underfunding of documentaries by the state was highlighted. Despite the great demand for documentaries since the beginning of the full-scale invasion – from foreign audiences, films continue to be made on a minimal budget, attracting co-funding and grants. Read also: Minister Tkachenko’s mistakes. Or which Ministry of Culture we do not need. About this in the comments of the UP. Darya Bassel, a programmer and curator of the Docudays UA industrial platform, told her life. “We now have all our film producers, including documentaries, feature films, all deprived of state funding. Unfortunately, state funding in Ukraine is the only resource from which we can get funds to make films. It is a little easier for documentaries in this situation, because the budgets are smaller. And we, in principle, are more or less able to attract our necessary event budgets through European grants, European support. But the competition is very high. And I think that as a result we will see something two, three years from now. I hope that, of course, we won’t die. I mean, in general, our young, active generation that is making documentaries now. But the ability of filmmakers to create and work in this field will be affected. And, perhaps the number of films there will be less,” Daria said. At the same time, a scandal broke out recently due to the allocation of UAH 448 million for the creation of TV series. You can read more here.

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