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Taras Tomenko's documentary "Terykony" was selected for the 72nd Berlin Film Festival competition programme

Taras Tomenko's documentary "Terykony" was selected for the 72nd Berlin Film Festival competition programme
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The world premiere of Taras Tomenko's film "Terykony" with the support of the State Film Agency will take place at the 72nd Berlin Film Festival. The film was selected for the competition section of the Berlinale - "Generation Kplus".


This is a story about children who do not see the war on TV and about childhood, which continues despite the war. Heaps are the place where the action takes place, and at the same time, the image of "spent" and abandoned human lives. The story of children who suffered from the shelling, who lost their parents and loved ones, but continue to live and love where life has left hope for others.

The main character of the film is Nastya. She '15. She lives in the small mining town of Toretsk, located in eastern Ukraine and still in the "gray zone". The city is on the line of demarcation: it is under fire almost every day. Nastya has the post-traumatic syndrome. In 2015, on New Year's Eve, three GRAD shells destroyed her house. Nastya is hiding from the world in virtual reality: she lives with music from the Internet and gains hope from the Internet. The school, which Nastya rarely attends, is located 800 meters from the positions of terrorists and has repeatedly become a target of Russian troops.

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More than 10,000 children in Ukraine living in the "gray zone" in the east of the country are in a similar situation.

Taras Tomenko has been researching this topic since the beginning of the war in Donbas. Since 2014, he has collected a lot of material and evidence, which in 2017, after a conversation with producer Vladimir Filippov (InsightMedia), turned into a project, "Terykony". In 2021, the film "Terykony" became a participant in the Work in Progress section of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and received the First Prize from the Ukraine TV channel in the Work in Progress section of the Odessa International Film Festival.

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Also important participants in the film's creation were cameraman Mykhailo Lyubarsky, whose skill made children stop noticing the camera and allowed showing their lives from the inside, and editing director Viktor Malyarenko, who disassembled a large amount of footage. This allowed Taras Tomenko to create precisely the film shown at the 72nd Berlinale.

The film "Terykony" became one of the Tenth State Cinema Competition winners. Production by InsightMedia with the support of the State Agency of Ukraine for Cinematography. The 72nd Berlin Film Festival will take place from February 10 to 20, 2022, and will be headed by the director, screenwriter and producer M. Night Shyamalan.

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