Cinema from Ukraine: the pretext to war

The Guardian is celebrating Ukrainian cinema with a specially curated selection of documentaries, made before the current war. Presented in collaboration with the Kyiv-based Docudays UA film festival, these award-winning movies offer insight into the modern history of the country, its culture and its people. 

In This Rain Will Never Stop, directed by Alina Gorlova, we meet 20-year-old Andriy Suleyman, who escaped Syria with his family and found refuge in Ukraine, his mother’s homeland. Shot in striking black and white, the film is a sophisticated vision of war zones and the scars they leave.

Having lived through the Maidan revolution, a pivotal moment in Ukrainian history, art has become a way for the radical cabaret act Dakh Daughters to reflect on the 2014 uprising while facing the harsh realities of today with wisdom and hope, as seen in Roses.Film-Cabaret, directed by Irena Stetsenko.  

School #3, directed by Yelizaveta Smith and Georg Genoux, invites pupils in Donbas to talk about the things that matter to them.

 

The Communist Revolution

The late 1970s became known as the golden age of cinema to some Afghan filmmakers as the communists took power.

Afghan filmmakers were forced to produce pro-Soviet propaganda movies but the occupation granted them more funding and access to Russian film equipment.

These new resources allowed filmmakers to produce independent auteur work.

Over time, the communist rule became more censured as film became an instrument of ideological propaganda.

Cinema as resistance - filmmakers who want to change the world

Can cinema change the world? Five filmmakers believe it is possible: everywhere from Mozambique to the US. They reveal people traumatized by war in Mozambique, the willful destruction of nature in Brazil, the fight against racism in the US and child poverty in Lebanon. An Arts.21 Special.

They reveal people traumatized by war in Mozambique, the willful destruction of nature in Brazil, the fight against racism in the US and child poverty in Lebanon. An Arts.21 Special. Inadelso Cossa (Regisseur, Mosambik) "I believe that images can change people." With his poetic films, Inadelso Cossa tries to heal the wounds and trauma suffered by people in his African homeland of Mozambique, where a civil war raged for more than a decade.

Russia's big patriotic screen: Making films for the motherland

Russia's cinematic efforts to produce patriotic films and documentaries.

Hitting cinema screens in Russia this month was a new light-hearted romcom - a story of love and construction along the Kerch Strait, the body of water that separates Russia from Crimea.

The film is called The Crimean Bridge. Made with Love!, and the fact that Crimea was annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014 makes the protagonist's exclamation, "welcome to the Krimski Bridge, the biggest bridge in Russia!" somewhat controversial, as the majority of world leaders do not recognise Crimea as Russian.

It was not particularly popular with Russian audiences, however, the Russian political establishment took great interest.

Russia's big patriotic screen: Making films for the motherland

Russia's cinematic efforts to produce patriotic films and documentaries.

Hitting cinema screens in Russia this month was a new light-hearted romcom - a story of love and construction along the Kerch Strait, the body of water that separates Russia from Crimea.

The film is called The Crimean Bridge. Made with Love!, and the fact that Crimea was annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014 makes the protagonist's exclamation, "welcome to the Krimski Bridge, the biggest bridge in Russia!" somewhat controversial, as the majority of world leaders do not recognise Crimea as Russian.

The attempt to rebuild Pakistan's cinema culture-video

On the fifth take, everything appeared to have come together. The script monitors confirmed that the two actors had got their lines right, the woman in charge of the set was pleased with how the crumbling apartment in a Karachi slum had been dressed, and the camera operator was content with the shot. But the distant screech of a motorbike from the teeming streets outside wrecked the take (barking mutts, the bane of earlier attempts, had been successfully shooed away by the crew's "dog team"). "OK, again," sighed the director, Jamshed Mahmood. "Sound is our biggest problem in Pakistan," he said. That, and a lack of cinema houses to show the work of movie makers, chronic DVD piracy and the near-complete collapse of the country's once vibrant film industry.