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‘Festival within a festival’ opens with Anna Buryachkova’s Venice’s Orizzonti Extra title Forever-Forever

The Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival is returning to the Filmfest Hamburg for the second year running as a “festival within a festival” to present its national competition of Ukrainian feature films.

The competition line-up opens on October 2 with Anna Buryachkova’s Venice’s Orizzonti Extra title Forever-Forever.

The line-up also includes Tonia Noyabrova’s Berlinale’s Panorama film Do You Love Me?, Christina Tynkevych’s How Is Katia, which played in Locarno’s Filmmakers of the Present last year, Philip Sotnychenko’s Rotterdam and San Sebastian title La Palisiada,...

Ukrainian director Anna Buryachkova, awaiting the Venice premiere of her new film “Forever-Forever,” will soon turn to documentary “Will We Feel Again,” she revealed to Variety in Italy.

The film will see her reunite with Natalia Libet, producing for 2Brave Productions.

“In Ukraine, this is the time when you make documentaries, obviously. But I couldn’t picture myself at the frontline: there are enough wonderful people doing that. I want to concentrate on our inner lives instead,” she said.

“We are not allowing ourselves to feel and it affects everything: our bodies, our relationships. ‘Will we ever feel again?’ This is the question I keep hearing all the time. We are trying to smile, but we are consumed by darkness. We are wondering if we will be able to unlock these emotions again once the war is finally over.”

In the doc, she will explore the emotional ramifications of the ongoing conflict.

The Venice Film Festival will host a Ukrainian Day on Sept. 6 with a series of panels and meetings to support war-torn Ukraine and its film industry.

With this event, which follows an analogous initiative on the Lido last year, the fest’s parent organization, the Venice Biennale foundation, “reaffirms its solidarity with the Ukrainian people and the tragedy they are experiencing.” It segues from similar initiatives to support Ukraine organized by the Biennale during its visual arts and architecture sections.

The Venice fest’s Ukrainian Day will be held at the Venice Production Bridge’s Spazio Incontri at the Hotel Excelsior. It will include an introduction by the president of the Biennale, Roberto Cicutto, and artistic director Alberto Barbera.

The first panel will be titled “The Ukrainian Film Industry During the War” and feature a presentation of the state of affairs by Marina Kuderchuk, head of Ukraine’s state agency for cinema.

Berlin-based sales agent Pluto Film has boarded “Forever-Forever” (“Nazavzhdy-Nazavzhdy”), Ukrainian filmmaker Anna Buryachkova’s feature directing debut, ahead of its world premiere in Venice Film Festival’s Horizons Extra competition.

After transferring from a downtown high school, Tonia (Alina Cheban) befriends a group of badass youngsters, trying to find protection from the people from her past and a place she truly belongs. They spend time together, roaming around Kyiv’s post-socialist suburbs, having fun and getting in trouble. Soon, Tonia falls in love with Zhurik. When she also falls for Sania (Arthur Aliiev), she finds herself tangled up in an alluring secret love triangle. But Tonia’s painful past still haunts her, challenging this newfound friendship and romance. Will she be able to find her own path or lose herself in this new controversial relationship?

Buryachkova stated: “This film is a love song to the lost teenagers of the late...