UKRAINE_VOICES / UKRAINE_VOICES

Things are happening so fast in Ukraine that it’s hard to keep up, all that can be said with certainty is that no historical event is conceivable without human agency. This omnibus documentary from the Indie Lab project initiated by Dmytro Tiazhlov and Ella Shtyka brings together people with practical ambitions combining vision with civil courage. One Orthodox bishop, unable to bear the hypocrisy of his church, becomes a LGBT activist-priest – hard to imagine in view of church banners with slogans like “The EU represents the greatest threat to the Holy Rus and healthy family life”. One animal protectionist from Askania Nova, the legendary UNESCO nature reserve, marches to Maidan square in Kiev. A woman protesting in the same location persuades the heavily armed and armoured policeman standing opposite her that steely determination and character are spiritual values, and they too can lead to a proposal of marriage… One man lives as an urban nomad with no ID documents, another goes to the European Court of Justice to fight for his rights. Things turn grisly in the Orthodox Cossack camp Crimea-Sich, where youngsters receive training in military homeland defence and in erecting moral barriers against Europe and Islam. Ukraine 2013/14: a documentary that sweeps across a kaleidoscopic spectrum of ideological disunity.

Episodes:
BEZ PASPORTU / IDENTIFICATION NEGATIVE, Director: Kristina Liulchenko
U POLI / IN THE FIELDS, Director: Andrei Litvinenko
PRAVO NA PROTEST. POCHATOK / RIGHT TO PROTEST. THE BEGINNING, Director: Maksim Dondyuk
PID MOSTOM / UNDER THE BRIDGE, Director: Jeanne Dovhych
NE PROSTO MYKOLAI / MORE THAN NIKOLAI, Director: Oksana Shornik
PENAL'TI PRAVOSUDDYA / PENALTY OF JUSTICE, Director: Slavik Bihun
EXARCH / EXARCH, Directors: Nadia Parfan, Maria Stoyanova
LOVE... SHARE / LOVE... SHARE, Director: Anastasiya Khonyakina

_______________________________________________

The production company New Kyiv was established by Ella Shtyka in 2001. The New Kyiv team is committed to producing powerful social-issue-driven documentaries on diverse aspects of Ukrainian reality. IndieLab Workshop, from which UKRAINE_VOICES emerged, numbers among the projects organized by New Kyiv. The omnibus documentary illustrates the important role played in public debate by filmmakers who disseminate information and document democratic aspirations.

The idea for UKRAINE_VOICES was conceived and developed by Dmytro Tiazhlov, who is also a member of the 2014 goEast Jury.