Oleksandr Pankieiev moved from Ukraine to Canada in 2010. In 2014, he watched from afar as Russia invaded, then annexed, Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. He felt helpless over the next few years, but the president of the Alberta Society for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies is not one to wallow, so he started planning the first Ukrainian Film Festival in Edmonton — only for COVID to stop it. But in 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of his home country compelled Pankieiev to bring the festival to life.
“This film festival is one of the tools I am using to cope with, and to communicate to people, what’s going on,” he says. “It was heartwarming for me to see the reaction from the Ukrainian community, and the larger Edmonton community, to the variety of films we brought last year.”
This year’s fest was initially going to feature only documentary films about the current daily horrors, but Pankieiev says that didn’t cover enough. “It’s important to remember that this is just a new stage of the war, so we have three documentaries about what is happening at this moment, and the other [scripted films] talk about what’s come before.”
Homeward deals with the 2015 Crimean invasion, “and this year will mark the 80th year of the genocide of Crimea Tatars, so it’s significant for us to screen this film because it’s their second time being displaced from their homes.”
The coming-of-age Do You Love Me? doesn’t explicitly feature war, but explores the bourgeoning culture at the beginning of Ukraine’s 1991 independence through the eyes of teenage protagonist, Kira.
The documentary In the Rearview follows Polish co-director Maciek Hamela as he uses his own car to rescue people from current-day hot zones (all the films have English subtitles), and fellow director Anna Palenchuk will speak after the screening.
Alisa Kovalenko will also speak after the screening of her documentary, We Will Not Fade Away, which follows five teenagers from the conflict-ridden Donbas region who go on a brief Himalayan expedition. Pankieiev says that while working on another documentary during the war in 2014, Kovalenko was captured by Russian forces, interrogated, and released. Over the next eight years she worked on this film with her five young “heroes,” some of whom, after the full-scale invasion, have disappeared, and she doesn’t know their fate.
“She was so affected by the war,” Pankieiev says, “that she decided to become a soldier also. And then after being a soldier for over a year, she returned from the front, and finished this documentary, which is about what was happening in that region for several years before the full-scale invasion, and how it was to live in that zone.”
Like last year, the fest ends with a comedy (Luxembourg, Luxembourg), to show “that there is a way out, and the future can be bright.” And while a film fest can’t stop bombs, Pankieiev says “it can help rebuild the souls of people and help them recover after the war.”
Support the Ukrainian artistic spirt by attending the free festival April 12 to 14 at Metro Cinema, and help Ukrainian people through the Ukrainian Film Festival in Edmonton website.
