How Ukrainian Filmmakers In Cannes Are Making Their Voices Heard: “We Have To Speak Loudly Through Cinema”

deadline.com:

Ukrainian filmmakers are here in Cannes and, in the words of poet Dylan Thomas, they will not go gentle. While some are here to promote films screening here in Cannes, many are here to drum up support for their country and ensure that their voices are not forgotten as media headlines about the Russian invasion begin to diminish.For many, it’s a strange paradox to be swanning around the sunny shores of Cannes in a film festival that feels vibrant and full of life, a festival where the only fighter jets are ones kicking off Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick when their home country continues to be ravaged by war.“It’s very strange to be here,” says Bosonfilm’s Aleksandra Kostina, producer of Directors’ Fortnight entry Pamfir, which premiered last night.

Speaking to Deadline in the Village International, she gazes a bunch of delegates walking barefoot on the beach before saying, “It’s hard to understand how life just continues around the rest of the world when our world has completely changed and will never be the same again.

It’s very surreal.”Her director, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk feels the same.“It’s amazing to be here and have my feature play in the festival but it’s not what belongs to my reality,” he says a few hours before the premiere of Pamfir, a drama about a man who faces small town corruption in Western Ukraine. “My reality is my country and it’s in the middle of an awful war.”He says he’s been sleeping soundly each night he’s been back at the festival. “You know why?” he asks. “Because I can’t hear the fighting planes and the air raids.

It’s safe here in Cannes. When my alarm on my phone goes off it’s not the alarm we get on our phones in Ukraine warning citizens of an air raid.”Maksym Nakonechnyi says being here