Burning, burning: Ukrainian religious and social cinema is presented in Warsaw

On October 14-23, Poland will host a large-scale film forum – the Warsaw International Film Festival, which, in particular, will “shelter” the national program of the International Odessa Film Festival, which, for obvious reasons, cannot host guests in its hometown this year.

And it is within the framework of the OMCF program that a short film will be presented  Lalibela (“Lalibela”) directed by Anna Morozova. This is a feature film where, according to the plot, an icon depicting the Ethiopian Mother of God appears in a Ukrainian village on the eve of Easter. The young priest has a conflict with the congregation, because the dark-skinned Mother of God does not inspire confidence in them. One night, someone sneaks into the church and slaps the icon, after which it begins to flow… It is interesting that this tape has come a long way in 3 years. And finally, he will meet his audience precisely in Europe.

“We would especially like to thank the writer Kateryna Kalytko, who wrote the beautiful book “Land of the Lost”, without which our “Lalibela” would not have been born,” comments producer and co-founder of the production Kyrylo Nechmonya.

By the way, the short documentary The Sandmen (“Sandmen”) directed by Roman Prokopchuk, which was also realized by the Mir & Co PRODUCTION team, entered the WIFF (Warsaw International Film Festival) competition program. This is a social story where the main character – a supervisor of the beach patrol in Kyiv named Dmytro – together with his colleagues talks about professional everyday life, sometimes very tragic. And he is trying to do everything to change the shocking statistics of drownings in Ukraine for the better.

 Is Ukrainian cinema “alive”? Of course. And his presence at festivals of this level is yet another reminder that Ukrainian culture can and should be present in an international context.

Photo: PR agency