Two films created with the support of the Ukrainian State Film Agency, "Klondike" and "A House Made of Splinters", dedicated to the war in eastern Ukraine, will be presented in the competition programmes of the American Independent Sundance Film Festival.

Simon Lereng Wilmont's documentary "The House of the Rolls" is Ukraine's second participation in the World Documentary Cinema Competition competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Last year, Iryna Tsilyk received the award for the best director in this section for the film "The Earth Is Blue As An Orange".

But the first Ukrainian feature film, which will be presented in the main competition programme World Dramatic Cinema Competition of the main festival of independent cinema in the United States, will be the drama "Klondike".

The film's director Maryna Er Gorbach has flown to Ukraine from Turkey, where she has lived for about 15 years, to tell about her film. According to her, from the beginning of the work on the film, the authors aimed to present "Klondike" at "Sundance" and communicated with representatives of the festival at all stages of the film.

"Sundance has such a system - you can see how your movie is viewed. And we saw that the reviews are very fast and even the selectors started putting "likes" after the reviews. I don't remember that, although this is the fourth film in my life. As a rule, selectors communicate very dryly. And I think that thanks to such warm communication - because they understood all the subtexts of the film very well - everything went so well. And we are very happy about that." - Maryna Er Gorbach

Marina Kuderchuk, Head of the State Cinema, noted that this year Ukrainian films were present at a large number of Class A festivals and their industrial platforms: Berlin, Cannes, Shanghai, Warsaw, Venice, Karlovy Vary, Tallinn (PÖFF Shorts). that Ukraine is capable of making films at a high world level.

"We are proud that the main programme of Sundance already includes Ukrainian cinema. Every year more and more Ukrainian films get to the world's leading festivals and successfully represent our country, our film industry. This is an achievement and a mature growth of Ukrainian cinema. The fact that a Ukrainian film is presented in the main programme of such an authoritative festival is already a victory." - Marina Kuderchuk

Artem Koliubaiev, Chairman of the Council for State Support of Cinematography, noted that the main thing is that thanks to the participation of national films in international festivals, the world community has the opportunity to learn what is really happening in Ukraine.

"Cinematic language is an opportunity to convey our narratives, our meanings to the international community. And this is a great victory for the American audience to watch this film and understand the other side of what is happening in Ukraine, what is happening to society and how the war affects the lives of ordinary citizens." - Artem Koliubaiev

The film tells the story of a family that was at the epicenter of events on July 17, 2014 in the village of Grabove, Donetsk region. The film's protagonists, Irka and Tolik, are expecting their first child; the war brutally invades their lives along with the wreckage of a downed Boeing. The main roles in the film were played by Oksana Cherkashina, Serhiy Shadrin and Oleg Shcherbyna.

The drama by director and screenwriter Marina Er Gorbach was created in a joint production of Ukraine and Turkey, and supported by the State Cinema of Ukraine.