Ukrainian cinema in focus at Tbilisi festival

Georgia’s capital Tbilisi is set to host a four-day program of film screenings and industry meetings in celebration of this year’s Film Festival Ukraine in Focus starting today.

Involving a diverse program of feature, short and animation works, the festival’s third edition will celebrate the contemporary Ukrainian cinema art at the capital city’s Amirani Cinema Theatre.

The event will open with the 2016 work The Nest of a Turtledove by Taras Tkachenko, narrating a story of a Ukrainian woman returning home following years of looking for better life in Europe.

In script by Tkachenko, the main protagonist of the feature faces difficult choices with her husband and family where she returns pregnant with a child from her homeowner in Italy.

The drama won the director the Best Ukrainian Feature award at the country’s Odessa International Film Festival last year.

Its screening will be followed by feature works including My Grandmother Fanny Kaplan by director Olena Demianenko and the documentary Close Relations by Vitaly Mansky.

Demianenko’s film is a fictionalised story of a Russian revolutionary who is known for her attempt to assassinate Vladimir Lenin in 1918, a significant incident contributing to the Russian Civil War.

A scene from the 2016 documentary 'Close Relations'. Screenshot from trailer.

The 2016 work from Mansky sees the director travel across Ukraine following the tumultuous political developments in the country since November 2013. In the process he explores the shattered connections between his family members now left on opposing sides of the conflict.

In addition to feature-length screenings, the festival will also present four award-winning shorts of the Odessa International Film Festival.

Rounding off the diverse screening program, the annual cinema event will host the Tbilisi premiere of Manouk Depoyan’s 2016 animation film The Dragon Spell.

We hope that every viewer will be able to attend the film screenings of his/her interest, will learn more about Ukrainian cinematography and take something special from the festival”, said the festival’s organiser Maria Moskalenko ahead of the event.

FilmmakerRoman Bondarchuk's 2015 documentary 'Ukrainian Sheriffs' was screened at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. Photo: IDFA.

The festival will also play host to emerging film professionals at master classes and meetings under its industry section.

The meetings will feature actors, cinematographers and festival organisers sharing their experiences in developing and promoting cinema projects.

The 2017 edition of Film Festival Ukraine in Focus will run through April 30.