ELEVATION
Max Rudenko
PARADOX FILM (Ukraine), PERIPATOS FILM SRL (Romania), PLESNAR & KRAUSS FILMS SP. Z O.O. (Poland)
A story of a ski jumper who does not know how to land.
VASYL is a ski jumping trainer from a children’s sports school. He was ski jumper but failed because of injury. Sport is everything in his life. He lives and works in a small, village deep in the Carpathian Mountains. Several times a year Vasyl ventures into the mountains to spend time in solitude. He believes that unity with nature gives him the strength to psychologically prepare his trainees for competitions, to cope with fear and self-doubt. I’m trying to open his personality through his young trainee. She is a teenager and very talented. Vasyl uses a unique technique to raise a new sports star. The trainer is at the end of his carrier and this is, may be, last chance for him to win.
Max Rudenko / IMDb
MAX RUDENKO was born in Mykolayiv, Ukraine. He graduated from the School of Cinema and Television in 2009, where he studied documentary film directing (class of Marina Razbiezhkina) and feature film directing (class Vladimir Fenchenko). He continued to study at the Gerasimov State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), the Cinematography Department (class of Igor Klebanov), and graduated in 2015. He lives in Ukraine and works as documentary film director, cinematographer and producer. In 2020, he formed a production company PARADOX FILM based in Kyiv and focused on the production of documentaries.
Director’s statement
As a child, I lived near a ski jump and spent a lot of time watching skiers flying into the air from the hundred-meter ski jump. It was like a magic. I wanted to jump too, but I couldn’t, I was scared. That is my personal motivation for this project. This is a story about a trainer of Ukrainian national team. He was a ski jumper himself, but failed because of injury. I’m trying to show his personality through his young trainee. She is a very talented teenager. I observe how their preparation for the upcoming competition. The story is not about sport, it is focused on a backstage of my protagonist’s life in sport. During the last four years I’ve been communicating with the protagonist. A sense of place - Getting to the Carpathian village, where Vasyl’ lives, is not easy. Nature here still dominates human. This is a place with a beautiful nature, far away from the 21st century.
Where are we at?
Total Budget: 245.870,00 EUR
Financing in place: 30.000,00 EUR
Sales Agent: none
Territories available: World
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Production Company profile
PARADOX FILM is an independent production company in Ukraine, based in Kyiv. We are focused on the production of documentaries in Ukraine and East Europe.