Ukrainian-born Mykyta Gibalenko’s debut feature film Camouflage has won the Grand Prix at the Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival, which t
Ukrainian-born Mykyta Gibalenko’s debut feature film Camouflage has won the Grand Prix at the Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival, which took place in the country’s capital from 24 October – 1 November.
Speaking at the awards ceremony in Kyvi’s House of Cinema, Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who headed this year’s international competition jury, said that he and his jury colleagues had been “especially united” in choosing Gibalenko’s graduation film about a teenage Ukrainian trying to build a novel life in Munich, who is confronted with both the war at home and his own family conflicts.
The Scythian Deer statuette and a $5,000 cash prize from the festival’s main partner, state lottery Lotto Zabava, was accepted on Gibalenko’s behalf by one of Camouflage’s actresses Anna Yaremchuk-Bobalo, and Jan Struckmeier, a member of the film’s German crew.
The production by Munich-based Kalekone Film had premiered in Venice Days in September and is being handled internationally by MMM Filmsales.
The international competition’s best feature award went to Rafael Manuel’s Sundance-winning Filipiñana, with a special mention for Pierre le Gall’s Zurich Golden Eye-winning feature Flesh & Fuel.
Scythian Deer statuettes and $2,000 cash prizes were awarded to Mélissa Silvera’s Diego for best tiny film and to Swiss-based Ukrainian filmmaker Iryna Melnychenko’s Reminiscence for best student film in the international competition.
The national competition jury, which included director-producer Vyacheslav Turyanytsya and Film Republic’s Xavier Henry-Rashid, gave its main award to co-directors Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk’s tiny documentary Homecoming and two special mentions to HOME TV by Sophia Gera and Fig by Novruz Hikmet.
“The films we saw ranged from more aesthetic-driven titles to young debuts as well as a particularly emotional screening of films surrounding the themes of war or the military,” Henry-Rashid told Screen. “One recurring theme was that of a home, the meaning of a home and the longing for one. Although the filmmakers were young, the shared pains of the war were felt throughout the films but also in the screening room.”
Meanwhile, the documentary competition’s award went to writer-director-composer Dmytro Todoriuk’s debut War Has No Children, while Molodist’s festival-goers voted for German director Kai Stänicke’s Trial of Hein as the winner of this year’s audience award.
Speaking to Screen on the festival’s closing day about this year’s edition, Molodist’s general director Andrii Khalpakhchi reflected on the challenge of holding an event in wartime conditions. “We had a bit more luck for the festival than the week before when there were more alarms and more bombing. There were only two times when we had to cancel the evening screening and reschedule for another time. We had been afraid that this would be every day.”
European Film Academy director and CEO Matthijs Wouter Knol, who was one of the members of the international competition jury, was in Ukraine and Kyiv for the first time for the festival.
Speaking to Screen after returning from Kyiv, Wouter Knol said: “Overall, we were lucky, as it was a relatively calm week and no direct calamities occurred in the festival area. It is easy to imagine the mental strain on people living in Ukraine or having family and friends there who are faced with drone or missile threats all the time. I could tell how tired and worn-out people have gotten after almost five years of war in Ukraine since the full invasion by the Russians in February 2022.”
Henry-Rashid added: “We as juries and international guests [who also numbered Belgian director Pieter-Jan de Pue, Lithuania’s Rostislav Kirpicenko and German DoP Konstantin Stell] were so grateful to have been included in the festival and I know many felt very emotional about the experience here. It was important to show that cinema and culture, and its right to exist, is an asset worth protecting.”
In addition to his jury work, Wouter Knol said that the week in Kyiv had allowed him to meet with several local film producers, filmmakers, festival organisers, as well as representatives of the Ukrainian Film Academy, the Ukrainian minister of culture Tetyana Berezhna and Andrii Osipov, head of the Ukrainian State Film Agency Derzhkino.
Wouter Knol said that it had been “particularly moving” to see the studio buildings at the Dovzhenko Studios where legendary filmmakers as Dziga Vertov, Sergei Parajanov and Oleksandr Dovzhenko himself had shot their films.
He was at the studios for an official unveiling ceremony of a plaque to recognise the production complicated as part of the EFA’s Treasures of European Film Culture project.
While the current conditions in Kyiv naturally had an impact on local people coming to the festival, programmer Bohdan Zhuk reported that there was a good reception, for example, for the national competition programme as well as such documentaries as Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor’s Naza and Pieter-Jan de Pue’s documentary Mariinka which was shot over ten years following the lives of teenage Ukrainians in the frontline town of Mariinka the Donbas region.
“Mariinka was a very important film to show at Molodist for the Ukrainians even though it could be a bit controversial,” Zhuk said.
