‘Fragments of Ice,’ About USSR Dreams of a Western Paradise, Drops Trailer Ahead of Visions du Réel World Premiere (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Lise Pedersen In her first media interview published ahead of the world premiere of her debut feature “Fragments of Ice” at Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel, Ukrainian director Maria Stoianova tells Variety how her film’s intention shifted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Based entirely on archival footage shot on a camcorder by her father, a figure skater in former Soviet Ukraine, the film is voiced by the director, who was born in 1986 and takes the viewer back to the mid 80s and early 90s through her family’s story, as they experience the dissolution of the Soviet Union and of their dreams of a Western paradise.

Variety debuts the film’s trailer below. Stoianova started editing in 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Her father, she explains in the voice-over, filmed enthusiastically during his foreign tours with the Ukrainian Ensemble Ballet on Ice as well as moments spent with his family, but never during trips to countries from the Eastern bloc because “they didn’t interest him.” Her initial intention, she explains, was to explore what she calls “this vision of paradise” that her parents and many in the former Soviet bloc had of the West, and how it evolved amid a changing socio-political landscape.

She was about half-way through the edit when the war broke out. That’s when she realized there were two sides to what she describes as the “growing-up process” shown in her film. “One is about this ideal world that you want to achieve – maybe there are illusions, because what you see from a distance is so attractive.