Two Ukrainian films win awards at Kraków Film Festival

According Ukrinform, this is reported by the festival’s website.

Easter Day, directed by Mykola Zasieiev, won the award for Best European Film in the short film category.

“It takes truly exceptional sensibility and subtlety to tackle such a grim subject while still drawing out the humor and humanity from a tragic wartime experience,” the festival jury said.

The film tells the story of an Easter Sunday in Kyiv. Two Territorial Recruitment Center officers slowly drive through the city streets looking for men who may be eligible for military service. Their path crosses with that of a young man who has left his home to buy cat food.

The festival’s Silver Horn award, presented to a director for a Film of High Artistic Merit was awarded to Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk for Silent Flood.

“We were profoundly moved by the way in which the film captures the beauty of simple gestures with unwavering artistic rigour and faith in humanity, even in the darkest hours of war. Bread-making becomes a metaphor for the act of filmmaking itself: an exercise in patience, perseverance, and solidarity that unfolds over time, nourishing the hope for a better world,” the jury stated.

The documentary follows a pacifist religious community living along the Dniester River on land that once formed the front line of two world wars. Their peaceful existence, filled with children’s laughter, is regularly disrupted by floods and, more recently, by war.

As previously reported by Ukrinform, the documentary 2000 Meters to Andriivka won an Emmy Awards for Outstanding Directing.