Participants of the Generation Ukraine project have been included in the programme of the International Independent Film Festival in Buenos Aires (Festivales de Buenos Aires), BAFICI.
On April 17th, in Argentina, BAFICI began, featuring the world premiere of the film "Basement" by Roman Blazhan and the Latin American premiere of "Intercepted" by Oksana Karpovych, which received a special prize from the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlinale.
Both films are part of the collection of 12 documentary films in the Generation Ukraine programme, directed by Ukrainian filmmakers after February 24, 2022, addressing the impact of Russian aggression on Ukraine and co-produced with ARTE. The Ukrainian Institute partnered with the project, financed by the German-French channel.
The film "Basement" is dedicated to the story of the village of Yahidne in Chernihiv region. For 27 days, Russian occupiers held over three hundred people in the basement of the local school. The director listens to what people thought during their captivity, observes their daily lives. They laugh, dance among the debris, sing together, and cry in solitude. Roman Blazhan creates a humane and humanistic film without answers but with a compassionate heart.
The director of the film "Intercepted," Oksana Karpovych, captures the peaceful composition of everyday life of Ukrainians, which changed after the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation. The antithesis to this visual sequence is intercepted phone calls of Russian soldiers to their loved ones. The film presents audio testimonies about Ukraine and the course of the war, which occupiers share in intimate conversations with relatives.
