ukraine and russia in a state of war

IN LIMBO - W ZAWIESZENI
How can we under­stand what this war does to people? Alina Mak­si­menko and Olha Zhurba, two Ukrain­ian film­mak­ers, have found very dif­fer­ent approach­es to making life during the war com­pre­hen­si­ble on film.  It is Feb­ru­ary 2022, and the fight­ing around Kiev forces film­mak­er Alina Mak­si­menko to move to her par­ents’ vil­lage in the north-east of Ukraine. This is where she makes her film IN LIMBO. As the impacts get audi­bly closer, many neigh­bors flee. Alina and her par­ents decide to stay and have to learn to deal with this isolation.  In her film SONGS OF SLOW BURNING EARTH, Olha Zhurba devel­ops a kind of diary of every­day life during the war. Her camera is direct, she is among and with the people. In her images, she achieves an inten­si­ty and close­ness that is hard to resist. If there is such a thing as a soul, here it lies open.  The third film in this series gives a rare insight into the future of those who can no longer imag­ine a life on the Russ­ian side. In their film DOM, Svet­lana Rodina and … read more

IN LIMBO - W ZAWIESZENI

Alina Maksimenko
Poland 2024 | 71 Min. | DCP, EN subs

Wed, 28-May-25 07:30 PM
Q&A via zoom with:
Alina Maksimenko
The human meat grinder is at work, what use are prayers? - father Tolya asks his wife and daugh­ter. The three of them remain in their house in a large­ly … read more

Opening Film - DOM

Laurent Stoop, Svetlana Rodina
Switzerland 2024 | 101 Min. | DCP, EN subs

Tue, 27-May-25 07:00 PM
Filmgespräch mit:
Corinna Dästner, Laurent Stoop, Svetlana Rodina

DOM - means house in Russ­ian. How­ev­er, it will not be a home for those who have found shel­ter here in Tbil­isi. They are young Russ­ian oppo­si­tion activists, jour­nal­ists and blog­gers who had to leave their coun­try due to the repression.

Now, they are sit­ting in their Dom, net­work­ing with friends, rel­a­tives, and oppo­nents of the regime in Russia, and dis­cussing the war and the next protest action against Putin in Tbil­isi. Yet, their activism only masks the grow­ing cer­tain­ty that there will be no return for them. And even in the city a graf­fi­ti warns: “Rus­sians, you are not wel­come in Georgia”.

With their film, Svet­lana Rodina and Lau­rent Stoop offer an insight into a side of the war that is rarely seen in West­ern media. It’s 2022, and a lost gen­er­a­tion is search­ing for its path, some find an apart­ment, others travel on. But where to?

SVETLANA RODINA, born in 1975 in Russia, grad­u­at­ed in Russ­ian lit­er­a­ture, philol­o­gy and
film direct­ing in Moscow. In 2015, she com­plet­ed a master’s degree in film direct­ing at the Moscow Film School. A screen­writer and direc­tor of doc­u­men­taries, she has also worked as a host for var­i­ous tele­vi­sion pro­grammes. OSTROV (2021) won Best Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture Doc­u­men­tary at Hot Docs in Toronto.

LAURENT STOOP, born in 1965 in Lau­sanne, Switzer­land, holds a degree in Lit­er­a­ture from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geneva and a pho­tog­ra­phy diplo­ma from CEEP in Vevey. In 1995, he found­ed Mayak-Film in Moscow and began an inten­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion with Swiss tele­vi­sion, ARD, ZDF and France 2. As a DOP, he has shot var­i­ous tele­vi­sion and polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries, includ­ing the award-win­ning and crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed CITIZEN KHODORKOVSKY (2016).

SONGS OF SLOW BURNING EARTH 

Olha Zhurba
Denmark, France, Sweden, Ukraine 2024 | 95 Min. | DCP, EN subs

Thu, 29-May-25 04:30 PM
Q&A via zoom with:
Olha Zhurba
In Songs of Slow Burn­ing Earth, film­mak­er Olha Zhurba doc­u­ments Ukraine’s slow descent into the abyss of war over two years. But what does war truly mean and what images … read more