Cork International Film Festival is to screen Cannes award-winning tour-de-force feature, Donbass by acclaimed Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa at the Gate Cinema, Cork on Thursday, 7th April with all proceeds going to support Ukrainian filmmakers. The film will start at 6.30pm and will be introduced by CIFF Director of Programming Anna Kopeckà. We are also honoured to welcome Ukrainian Ambassador Ms Larysa Gerasko who will say a few words of welcome at the event.
CIFF stands with the Ukrainian people while the appalling and unprovoked war waged by Russia continues and, like many festivals and arts organisations, wishes to support our friends in this region. As a longstanding champion of Irish and international filmmakers, many renowned Ukrainian filmmakers have screened their films at CIFF over the years, including Alina Gorlova and her film This Rain Will Never Stop which was awarded CIFF’s Gradam Na Féile Do Scannáin Faisnéise (Award for Cinematic Documentary) in 2021, and who has written an open letter addressing the Russian attack on Ukraine, along with fellow Ukrainian filmmakers. Now, with the support of our audiences, we aim to provide practical assistance to the Ukrainian filmmaking community at this time via a support fund created by the Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Ukraine.
The DOCU/HELP fund for Ukrainian filmmakers and the festival team has been set up to tell the world about Russia’s crimes in Ukraine, support those who are documenting these crimes, and continue to introduce the world to contemporary Ukrainian culture. In particular, the filmmakers’ fund is assisting filmmakers who are bravely documenting the events in the war in Ukraine by providing them with the most necessary filming equipment without which it is impossible to continue filming and working (such as batteries, hard drives, memory cards, chargers, adapters, microphones, replacements for damaged lenses, etc.). It will also help cover essential support costs, including the costs of fuel, medicine and first aid kits, as well as basic needs in emergency situations.
All proceeds from the ticket sales of Donbass will be donated to directly support Ukrainian filmmakers during this time through the DOCU/HELP fund.
Tickets: €10.50 (Concessions €9)
If you would like to add a further donation to your ticket purchase, you can do so when booking.
About the film:
Winner of the Un Certain Regard award for Best Director at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
From acclaimed Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa (My Joy, A Gentle Creature), Donbass is a unique take on one of the most disturbing and threatening of contemporary conflicts, a grotesque tour de force, brilliantly, if harrowingly, imaging with stunning cinematography courtesy of Oleg Mutu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days).
“Filled with the violence and Orwellian unreality ruling eastern Ukraine, Sergei Loznitsa’s feverish procession of scenes is handled with steely control.”– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
In the Donbass, a region of Eastern Ukraine, a hybrid war takes place, involving an open armed conflict alongside killings and robberies on a mass scale perpetrated by separatist gangs. A journey through the Donbass unfolds as a chain of curious adventures, where the grotesque and drama are as intertwined as life and death. This is not a tale of one region, one country or one political system. It is about a world lost in post-truth and fake identities. It is about each and every one of us.
“A scathing portrait of a society where human interaction has descended to a level of barbarity more in keeping with late antiquity than the so-called contemporary civilized world.” – Variety
(Courtesy of Eureka Entertainment)
Watch the trailer for Donbass below.
