Week of Ukrainian Film festival kicks off tonight in Prague

Prague, Nov 12 (CTK) – The Week of Ukrainian Film festival opens in Prague tonight with the screening of Ukrainian drama film Atlantis (2019), written and directed by Valentyn Vasyanovych.

The festival is held in the Atlas and Evald cinemas until November 18.

The selected films reflect the complicated Ukrainian past and present and depict the conflict between the nation’s great history and the individual human fates in turbulent times, the organisers said.

Three films in this year’s festival programme, Atlantis, Homeward and Ilovaisk 2014. Donbas Battalion (all released in 2019), focus on the trauma caused by the Russian annexation of Crimea and the conflict with separatists in Eastern Ukraine.

The programme will also offer the latest film by Agnieszka Holland, Mr Jones (2019), which loosely tells the story of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who travels to the Soviet Union in 1933 to uncover the truths about the famine in Ukraine. He was the first to report on it in the Western world.

Holland’s film, which asks questions about a journalist’s responsibility and the impact of propaganda, was shot in Polish-British-Ukrainian coproduction.

The contemporary Ukrainian film-makers often explore historical themes, dating back to the 20th century, but also to the Middle Ages. The festival will show, for instance, The Rising Hawk (2019) historical action film, starring American actor Robert Patrick and Briton Tommy Flanagan. It is based on the novella Zakhar Berkut by Ukrainian author Ivan Franko (1856-1916), set in a self-governing community in the Carpathian region of Ukraine in the 13th century at the time of the Mongol invasion.

The festival will end with the screening of the comedy My Thoughts Are Silent, a feature debut directed by Antonio Lukich, which won the jury’s special award in the East of the West section at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this summer.

A novelty in the festival programme is the presentation of a series of five documentaries and short films from the “Mobile Cinema” project on Saturday.