Hot Docs Sidebar Made in Ukraine Boosts Ukrainian Docs, Market Action, Dialogue
variety.comJennie Punter Last year, during an online panel at Hot Docs film festival featuring Ukrainian documentary filmmakers who were staying in place, Oksana Karpovych told attendees how she’d gained knowledge working alongside foreign media crews covering the war, and was now applying that to her own creative documentary projects.
This year, at the festival’s 30th anniversary edition, Karpovych attended the in-person Forum market event to pitch “Intercepted” — her observational doc exploring the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — which ended up winning the 2023 CMF-Hot Docs Canadian Pitch Prize.
With Ukraine in the spotlight at Hot Docs this year, both audiences and industry attendees are getting wide exposure to the films and ideas of leading Ukrainian documentary creators.
The timing of this programming is perfect, said Hot Docs programmer Myrocia Watamaniuk, not only for the obvious reason. “Ukrainian documentary cinema has grown in lockstep with the documentary community around the world,” said Watamaniuk, pointing out that Hot Docs and Ukraine are around the same age. “What started as a trickle of Ukrainian names — every once in a while, a feature or co-production — has turned into a steady river of submissions of incredible films.” “The fact that this is happening during the second year of the war is a sad historical coincidence,” she added. “So many artists are working so hard, and this is the most challenging time for them, as well as the most significant time for all of us Ukrainians in the country and abroad.” The centerpiece program Made in Ukraine includes five short films — four made through Docudays UA’s Civil Pitch 2.0 production competition — as well as five recent features: AP journo
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