Ukrainian Director of CPH:DOX Title Shuns Red Carpet to Film Evacuation of War Refugees
24.03.2022 - 22:17
/ variety.com
Lise Pedersen While her first feature-length doc “Outside” is having its world premiere in the main competition at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (CPH:DOX), Ukrainian director Olha Zhurba will be back home.
The young filmmaker has decided to stay in her country to document the evacuation of refugees fleeing the war brought on by Vladimir Putin.“I’m Ukrainian and I need to film this for my nation,” she told Variety over the phone. “We will need to reflect on what is happening to us in the future to cope with the trauma of this tragedy.
I believe that films and art are part of this recovery that we will need on a psychological and mental level, and these films will be important in this process,” said Zhurba, who is best known for her fiction short “Dad’s Sneakers.” She said that on February 24, when the Russian invasion started, she was awoken in Kiev by the sound of explosions. For the first day or two she was in shock and scared, like everyone around her.
But then she picked up her camera and started filming.“I film because it’s easier to film than just observe what’s happening to our country, when I film I focus on work and it helps me to cope with war,” she explained.At first she stayed in the capital, but she soon headed south to Zaporizhzhia, which lies on the evacuation route from the besieged city of Mariupol to the relative safety of Western Ukraine.“We’re trying to record their stories – audio stories as well. We’re trying to film the big scale of this tragedy because we feel we can bring all this pain that our people are going through to the outside world and it’s our mission – something we must do as filmmakers,” she said.Audio recordings also play a major role in “Outside,” which tells the
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