The distribution company Arthouse Traffic has released a trailer for Volodymyr Tykhyy’s documentary ‘Ukrainian Independence’ about one day in the life of Ukrainians. The film will be symbolically shown in the cinema on August 24, 2023
The film consists of the events of one day — August 24, 2022 — in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa and at the frontline near Donetsk. In the film, representatives of a ‘beach’ police patrol, a woman anti-tank missile operator, a water delivery driver, a mortar unit soldier, a rapid assault unit soldier, a 14-year-old pub janitor, an artist and a people’s deputy of six convocations tell about their work. In ‘Ukrainian Independence’, the director shows how Ukrainian society is dependent on russian missiles, air alerts, and the work of the armed forces at the front.
The premiere took place at the Docudays UA international human rights documentary film festival. The film will also be screened at the Odesa International Film Festival, which will be held in Odesa and Chernivtsi on August 19—26.
The film was shot by 11 cameramen of Babylon’13 in different regions of the country. Director Volodymyr Tykhyy (‘One Day in Ukraine’) supervised the shooting of almost all of the film’s novellas from a distance.
In our White Balance podcast, Tykhyy tells us more about the preparations for the ‘Ukrainian Independence’ project and the behind-the-scenes of Ukrainian television in the 1990s.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the creative association BABYLON’13 has been documenting war crimes by the russian army throughout Ukraine. They not only collect materials and publish them on social media, but also make short and feature-length films about the occupier’s aggression. Volodymyr Tykhyy is the most prominent representative of this association, who, after live-action films ‘The Green Jacket’ (2013) and ‘Lethal Kittens’ (2020), continues to show how the country is changing.
