Prairie Ukrainian Film Festival (PUFF)
June 15–18, 2023
Schedule:
Thursday, June 15
4:00 PM: My Thoughts are Silent
7:00 PM: Pamfir
Friday, June 16
4:00 PM: We Will Not Fade Away
Saturday, June 17
10:15 AM: Stop-Zemlia
Sunday, June 18
1:00 PM: Homeward
3:00 PM: Klondike
At Remai Modern
(102 Spadina Crescent E, Saskatoon, Canada)
All films have English Subtitles.
MY THOUGHTS ARE SILENT (2019)
Thursday, June 15, 4:00 PM
Debut Film by director Antonio Lukich. Winner of FIPRESCI, Golden Duke and Special Jury Mention at the 2019 Odesa International Film Festival.
Synopsis:
Twenty-five-year-old Vadym earns a living recording and selling all kinds of different sounds; nevertheless, he’d rather exchange his life in Kyiv for a better future in far-flung Canada. Thus, when he gets a generous job offer which might help him realize his dream, he jumps at the chance. He soon sets off to record the sounds of animals indigenous to Ukraine as well as a rare bird native to the Carpathians. The situation proves somewhat more complicated when Vadym’s companion on the trip turns out to be his mother… To the sounds of a synthesized music score, director Antonio Lukich unfolds a visually creative road movie, in which he demonstrates a highly unusual talent for constructing tragicomic situations.
IMBD: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7876510/
Keywords: family comedy, mom-son relations, Transcarpathia region, Canadian dream, sound recording
PAMFIR (2022)
Thursday, June 15, 7:00 PM
Directed by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk. Winner of 17 international awards including the Raindance Award at the 2022 Raindance Indie Film Festival of UK. Nominated for the Golden Camera Award at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
Synopsis:
Western Ukraine, on the eve of a traditional carnival. Reformed smuggler Pamfir returns to his village for the annual Malanka festival after months of working abroad in Poland. His family’s love is unconditional, so when his teenage son runs afoul of a local mob boss, Pamfir has no other choice but to take one last smuggling trip to Romania to repair his son’s fault. A family drama set against a backdrop of a criminal thriller, it is a story about devotion, loyalty, love, and redemption.
IMBD: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7876510/
Keywords: family comedy, mom-son relations, Transcarpathia region, Canadian dream, sound recording
WE WILL NOT FADE AWAY (2023)
Friday, June 16, 4:00 PM
Directed by Alisa Kovalenko
Synopsis:
We Will Not Fade Away follows the adolescence of Andriy, Ruslan, Ilya, Lisa and Lera in the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2019, where bombings can be heard in the distance. Somewhere between existential questions, the desire to escape from reality, and the yearning for the future, the teenagers seem to expect something to happen in their lives. One day, they are offered a unique opportunity to climb the Himalayas... In this bitter-sweet documentary, Alisa Kovalenko depicts a young generation full of dreams and questions that are constantly threatened by the ever-closer presence of a war that is set to escalate. This documentary includes challenging and/or triggering subject matter.
IMBD: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11389212/
Keywords: Documentary, Hot Docs, the Donbas War, children in a warzone, a Himalayan expedition
STOP-ZEMLIA (2021)
Saturday, June 17, 10:15 AM
Directed by Kateryna Gornostai. Winner of 11 international awards & 5 nominations.
Synopsis:
Hanging out with friends, smoking too much, spinning bottles and kissing, making mistakes, playing, refusing to accept, dreaming with open eyes – life as a teenager can be overwhelmingly beautiful and difficult at the same time. Introverted high school girl Masha sees herself as an outsider unless she’s hanging out with her two best friends, Yana and Senia, who share her non-conformist attitudes. While trying to navigate through her last year of school, Masha falls in love in a way that forces her out of her comfort zone. In her debut, the Ukrainian director Kateryna Gornostai composes a deeply emotional and multi-layered portrait of a generation, seamlessly flowing between fiction and documentary.
IMBD: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14028890
Keywords: Kyiv schoolchildren, urban Ukraine, urban Kyiv, first love, high school
HOMEWARD (2019)
Sunday, June 18, 1:00 PM
Directed by Nariman Aliev. Nominated for the Golden Camera and Un Certain Regard Awards at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.
Synopsis:
Having lost his elder son in the war, Mustafa has to transfer his dead body to his homeland - Crimea. During this long and challenging trip, Mustafa tries to solve innumerable problems while finding a common language with his accompanying younger son. They experience a coming of age transition revealing each other's strengths and weaknesses. Having lost the one they both loved, the two grow genuinely close to each other.
IMBD: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9431740/
Keywords: the Donbas war, death, transferring dead body home, family drama, father-son relations, Crimea, Crimean Tatars
KLONDIKE (2022)
Sunday, June 18, 3:00 p.m.
Directed by Maryna Er Gorbach. Ukraine’s official entry for the best international feature film at the 95th Academy Awards. Winner of 39 International awards including the Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festiva, and International Istanbul Film Festival.
The story of a Ukrainian family living on the border of Russia and Ukraine during the start of the war. Irka, who is pregnant, refuses to leave her house even as the village gets captured by armed forces. Shortly after they find themselves at the center of an international air crash catastrophe on July 17, 2014.
“An exhilarating piece of cinema, meticulously framed, exquisitely blocked, and beautifully performed, this is a film about the choices we make as the world is torn apart.” - Juror Andrew Haigh, Sundance Film Festival 2022
IMBD: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt16315948/
Keywords: the Donbas war, family drama, pregnancy, civilians in war zone
PUFF 2023 Curator
Dr. Oksana Dudko - Festival Curator
Oksana is a historian of 20th-century Europe with a special focus on violence, gender, and the cultural history of the first world war and the revolutions in Eastern Europe. Her research project explores the phenomenon of “revolving mobilization”—ongoing shifts in former imperial soldiers’ allegiances to different (and often ideologically opposed) armies, which shaped their combat experiences during the multiple conflicts of 1914–1920 in Eastern Europe. The project showcases the experiences of the Ukrainian soldiers of Habsburg Galicia.
Oksana has taught courses on the history of Ukraine, the history of the first world war, and gender and violence in the 20th century at various universities in Lviv, Ukraine. She also serves as an invited researcher for history exhibitions in Ukraine and Poland.
Since 2011, Oksana has been a research fellow at the Center for Urban History in Lviv. She served as a manager of the digital map project Lviv Interactive in 2011–2016. Currently, she is cross-appointed as a principal investigator of the project “Urban Culture, Entertainment, and Networking in Times of Social Unrest, Wars, and Revolutions (1900s–1920s).”
In addition, for more than ten years, Oksana has been curating theatre projects in Ukraine. Oksana was a founder and artistic director of the International Theatre Festival Drabyna (2004–2011) and the New Dramaturgy Festival Drama.UA (2010–2013). She was also one of the founders and program curators of the First Stage of Contemporary Dramaturgy Drama.UA in 2014. Currently, she is a Petro Jacyk Postdoctoral Fellow at St. Thomas Moore College at the University of Saskatchewan.
“Keep talking about Ukraine. Keep the conversation alive. Give Ukrainians your focus because it’s a long war — and global solidarity matters.” ~ Dr. Oksana Dudko
