“Butterfly Vision” – Ukrainian film released – trailer

Today, April 6, the war drama “Vision of a butterfly” directed by Maksym Nakonechny. Its world premiere took place at last year’s Cannes Film Festival.

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Nakonechny’s debut full-length film tells the story of an air reconnaissance officer called Metelik Lilya, who is taken prisoner by the Russians as a result of a serious injury, and then returns to her family as a result of an exchange. But to return to the previous life after being in the war, and especially after the horrors of captivity, turns out to be too difficult.

As Maksym Nakonechnyi told in an interview with UP.Kultura, his team wanted to give the audience space for reflection with their war drama: “To offer the audience such a reflection, which, despite all the difficulty of our current situation, still offers some exits and options. Shows the story of a person who survived and managed to preserve his own vision of his life“.

The premiere of “Vision of a Butterfly” was held in Kyiv. Photo: Arthouse Traffic

Events in “Visions of a butterfly” take place in 2017 – before the full-scale invasion of Russia on February 24, 2022, but already after the start of the war in 2014. Nakonechnyi noted that his tape gives a clear understanding that the war that the Russian Federation has unleashed in Ukraine is already nine years

“There are many scenes about this in the movie actually. They point out that even between different members of society there was a huge gap, especially between those who did not notice this war and those who were involved in this war. And this had its own certain consequences, which led to the fact that for someone a full-scale invasion became a surprise, and for someone a natural development of events“, said the director.

Maxim Nakonechny (in the center). Photo: Arthouse Traffic

The author of the script, together with Nakonechny, was the writer, director, Sundance prize winner Iryna Tsylyk (“The earth is blue, like an orange”, “Me and Felix”). The viewer can see another director already in the frame – Natalka Vorozhbyt played in “Visions of a butterfly“one of the key roles.

In addition to her, volunteers Myroslav Gai, Roman Sinitsyn, the founder of the Women’s Veteran Movement Katya Pryimak and other military personnel starred in the film. Professional actors Rita Burkovska and Lyubomir Valivots were entrusted to play the two main roles – air scout Lili and her husband Tokha.

“For the main roles, in which the depth of the character and the emotional amplitude were very large, I still tried to take professional actors or at least people from the workshop, in order to share with them the responsibility for their psychophysical apparatus, so that the person was also minimally trained to disassemble, and then to pull myself together“, Nakonechny explained his choice.

The world premiere of the drama “Vision of a butterfly” took place in the Special View competition program of the Cannes Film Festival 2022. At the Odesa Film Festival, which took place as part of the Warsaw Film Festival last year, the film won the Best Ukrainian Feature Film award. The Ukrainian premiere of the film took place at the sixth Kyiv Critics’ Week.

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