‘To win!’ Imagines that after the war, Ukraine tries to rebuild

Award-winning Ukrainian Film Producijl Valentin Vasianovich (“Atlantis”) head towards Toronto Film Festival Use your last features “to victory!” The semi-book story of corrupt families and fractured lives set after the defeat of the Russian forces of the Ukrainian army. Movie premiere in a film at the festival part of the platform.

“Until victory!” Whether the work is a speculative fiction that takes place in post-war Ukraine, where Russia’s invasions tried to renew their lives in the liberated country, as they soon discovered, may not be quite a homeland they longed for. Ukraine-Lithuania Co-production produced by names, arsenal films and M-movies, wrote and directed by Vasianovich, which also stars in the main role. The best friend forever handling world sales.

Vasianovich plays a novel, happy director who is out of work and tries to shoot his latest film in a country whose war standing is still traumatized by war. While his wife and daughter build a new life in Vienna, Roman remains behind – confused, restless and convinced that things will improve. Despite the efforts of his wife to lure him in Austria, the Romanin insists him on getting him in Ukraine until his last film draws up.

The meta-fiction that follows is a story about a filmmaker, which, like Vasianovich, also indicates everything, it is impossible to tell a story that is not related to the war. Surrounded by friends who experience their own anxiety that brought family separation and marital quarrels, they make a low budget, largely improvised by a film that tries to catch their strange new reality.

Speak Variety We have a film’s Toronto Premiere before us, Vasinovich says “victory!” It is “not an autobiographical film”, in itself, as “predicting potential autobiography in the future”. The film is a recording in the middle of the insecurity of the war that will fight even more uncertainty.

Created with a skeletal crew of just six or seven people – all the friends of the director, and was built behind the camera, says Vasianovich, as a “huge psychological release”, as long as groups allowed to forget the reality of the war. “She really helped to distract (US) from other thoughts,” says the director. “It was a kind of collective psychotherapy.”

The improvised nature of production was born partly for practical needs. Early, Vasianovich threw a professional in a major role, just to realize that the actor – who was a member of Ukrainian armed forces – could return to the front at any time. “It was absolutely impossible to do this a typical way with the actors,” says Vasianovich, who had to overcome his initial reluctance before he finally agreed to appear on camera.

The director also admitted that he would try to show immediate war through fiction that his compatiot Olens’ experimental documentary filmmakers were recorded in the line of war – it was “much more creative” from everything that he could withdraw with the crew production in Kiev.

Instead, Vasianovich set up the events “in victory!” One year in the future, foresizing the possible triumph of its country due to Russian forces to focus on what follows – at a complex task of rebuilding the nation is no longer an animating director of everyday life. Like the director, which is separated from the family at the beginning of the war, many Ukrainians fought with depression and other issues of mental health, while 5 million of its countrymen are fully from Russia invasion in full force in 2022. Years. There is no said how much peace agreement will be signed.

“It is important that you start thinking about when the war is over,” Vasianovich insists, adding that his “greatest fear” return to the status quo dominated the populist policies and distractions of the usual fighting everyday fighting. This applies to the concern for the country’s film industry, noting how tempting it could be for Ukrainian director “to make propaganda films and stupid comedies”, not “thinking about the trauma” Kosovo.

“Culture is really important,” Vasianovich says, stating the development of robust national identity – through the cinema and other forms of popular culture – as a embankment against foreign provocation. “If we had a strong culture … Russia would never attack us. But the only thing that really protects you from eating by bigger neighbors is that you are different, and neighbors know you are different.” And Susana knows you are different. “

For more than three years, Ukrainian soldiers, recruits and ordinary civilians gave their life to defend their country’s borders, and Vasianovich speaks Variety Only days before the most recent rush of Russian missiles in Kiev. The director says that he is persecuted with one question: “What happens (if) all victims do not come into nothing?”

“We don’t believe in hope after everything that happened,” it continues. “I hope it is not the strongest part of our mentality. Because if you have hope, you do not want to be disappointed. It will believe us, it is very disappointed. The history of our country is to a large extent.