At the Marché du Film market of the 74th Cannes Film Festival, the newly created Gothenburg Film Fund announced the first three projects supported by the fund, selected from more than a thousand applications. One of them was the Ukrainian film "La Palisiada": Filip Sotnychenko's film will receive 34,000 euros from Sweden to complete the film.
The fund is a new initiative of the Gothenburg Film Festival, the main film forum in Scandinavia, which has been held since 1979. Göteborg Film Fund 2021 is a new film fund with the aim to support stories and filmmakers from Brazil, Sudan, Ukraine and Kurdish filmmakers in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Göteborg Film Fund 2021 will support development, post-production and innovative distribution of feature films (fiction, documentary, animation) and series of high artistic level and democratic value.
Göteborg Film Fund 2021 is an initiative with the aim to strengthen the film industry and contribute to a diversified culture and media landscape, with increased artistic freedom and free speech. It is a one-year project, supported by the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the goal to establish a permanent international film fund. The fund will, during the year, target four different regions with different challenges and preconditions. The funding schemes will be announced with two different deadlines, in May (development and post-production) and July (innovative distribution) 2021. The fund will in total distribute SEK 4 000 0000 (approx. € 400 000) in 2021.
The events of the feature debut of the winner of Ukrainian and international film festivals Filip Sotnychenko "La Palisiada" unfold in Ukraine in 1996, a few months before the signing of Protocol â„– 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This protocol provided for the abolition of the death penalty, which Ukraine inherited from the USSR: in terms of the number of death sentences, Ukraine had one of the highest rates in the world.
In each country, the theme of the death penalty resonates in its own way.
Filip Sotnychenko
"La Palisiada" is shot in a special style, combining film images and modern digital technologies. For the filming of the 90's, the film's authors use a retro camera, the last surviving tapes of which are ordered around the world.
The "La Palisiada" project was first presented at the Odessa Film Festival in 2019, where it won the HeForShe Solidarity Movement Award for Gender Equality from the United Nations. Selectors of international film festivals in Venice, San Sebastian, Warsaw, Tallinn, Karlovy Vary and even in South Korea's Busan have already shown interest in the young Ukrainian director's unusual film.
The director and author of the script is Filip Sotnychenko, the cameraman is Volodymyr Usyk. Cast: Andriy Zhurba, Novruz Hikmet, Oleksandr Parkhomenko, Valeria Oleynikova, Olena Mamchur, Oleksandr Maleev, Stepan Barabash, Serhiy Luzanovsky, Oleksandr Mavrits. The producers of the film are Halyna Kryvorchuk, Valeria Sochyvets, Sashko Chubko. The film is created by VIATEL and Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema with the support of the Ukrainian State Film Agency and the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. The final shooting of the picture will take place in autumn in Transcarpathia and Kyiv.
The premiere of "La Palisiada" is scheduled for 2022.
