Roman Bondarchuk

The Editorial Office

YURA, a junior researcher at the provincial museum of nature, during one of the field trips witnesses an arson in the forest. Searching for justice, he brings the photos of the crime to an editorial office of a local paper, and coincidentally gets a journalist job there. New profession emerges him into a treacherous world of a post-truth.

DIRECTOR
Roman Bondarchuk

PRODUCERS
Darya Bassel

Dar'ya Averchenko

CO-PRODUCERS

Tanja Georgieva-Waldhauer

Dagmar Sedláčková

Katarina Krnacova

PRODUCTION COMPANY
Moon Man

COUNTRIES
Ukraine
Germany
Czech Republic
Slovakia

GENRE
Fiction

Roman Bondarchuk

ROMAN BONDARCHUK is a Kyiv State University of Theatre, Cinema and Television graduate. He serves as artistic director and sits on the Selection Committee of Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. In 2019, he won the Laureate of the Taras Shevchenko Prize, Ukraine’s highest award for artistic achievement. Also, since 2019, he has been a member of the Ukrainian Academy Award (Oscars) Selection Committee. His oeuvre includes feature film, short film, documentary, and music video work. His first feature-length documentary film, UKRAINIAN SHERIFFS (2015), took the Special Jury Prize at IDFA and was selected as the Ukrainian submission to the 89th Academy Awards (Oscars) in the category of Best Foreign-language Film. His second documentary effort, DIXIE LAND (2016), premiered at the Full Frame Film Festival (USA) and received the Golden Duke Award for best Ukrainian Film at the Odesa International Film Festival. His fiction debut, VOLCANO (2018), has won 12 international awards and was selected for screening by more than 50 festivals worldwide.

We shot this film in the fall of 2021 in Kherson, my hometown. Now it is a front-line city, seriously damaged. Every day, Russian bombs arrive from the still occupied left bank of the Dnipro river. After the attack on the Kakhovka dam, half of the town was drowned and now the streets are covered with black, smelly sludge. You may have heard about it on the news. But what do we know about these places and people before the war? Following YURA through the twists and turns of the film, the audience will be able to experience the search for inner freedom, which sometimes comes at a very high cost.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Darya Bassel

DARYA BASSEL used to work in TV and commercial production. In 2011, she joined Docudays UA IHRDFF, where she worked as a programmer and later as head of the industry platform. She started her career as a producer in 2013. She has participated in the Eurodoc, Producers Network (Marché du Film 2020), Ex Oriente and EAVE, and also served as a jury member at festivals such as Visions du reel, IDFA, Cinedoc Tbilisi, Astra, OIFF, One World Prague and Krakow IFF. Among her producer’s titles: OUTSIDE (2022), which had its world premiere at CPH:DOX and was screened at more than 20 film festivals around the globe, and BUTTERFLY’S VISION (2022), which premiered at Cannes in Un Certain Regard. She is also a co-producer on the Oscar-nominated award-winning documentary A HOUSE MADE OF SPLINTERS (2022).

Production company profile

MOON MAN was founded in 2019 by Darya Bassel and Vika Khomenko and focuses on creative documentary and fiction films with a strong author’s approach. In 2022, the company released its first title - the documentary feature OUTSIDE (2022). It had its world premiere at CPH:DOX. The company co-produced the Oscar-nominated, award-winning documentary A HOUSE MADE OF SPLINTERS (2022).

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