\n\t\u201cWe saw a huge downturn in admissions compared to previous weekends,\u201d says Film.UA CEO\u00a0Victoria Yarmoshchuk. Citing the \u201cturbulence\u201d of the second Trump administration, which has rattled global markets and witnessed a realignment of U.S. foreign policy, Yarmoshchuk stressed that unpredictable global events \u2014 such as the showdown in the Oval Office or Trump\u2019s chaotic tariffs rollout \u2014 \u201conly add confusion\u201d to a country, and an industry, longing for a return to the stable, predictable rhythms of the recent past.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAll this turbulence\u2026brings a lot of uncertainty,\u201d\u00a0Yarmoshchuk\u00a0says. \u201cYou cannot forecast how many people will come to your movie, how many people will watch your TV show. It all adds vulnerability to your market.\u201d In times of uncertainty, she adds,\u00a0\u201cpeople tend to turn away from entertainment and concentrate more on their daily lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tMore than three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there is no end to the conflict in sight. In late April, President Trump again lashed out his Ukrainian counterpart on social media, insisting that President Zelenskyy \u201ccan have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country,\u201d after the Ukrainian leader rejected a U.S. peace plan that largely favors Russia. A Kremlin-brokered three-day ceasefire in early May unraveled within hours, prompting Ukrainian officials to label it a \u201cfarce.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tMarkets are on a destructive roller-coaster ride across the globe, while inflation \u2014 and the cost of production \u2014 is rising. European partners who stepped up in the wake of Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion to not only support the beleaguered Ukrainian screen industries, but the country\u2019s humanitarian effort, are \u201ctrying to extend and increase their support,\u201d says Darya Bassel, of Kyiv-based outfit Moon Man, who produced the Oscar-nominated \u201cA House Made of Splinters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThat largesse, however, is in increasingly short supply amid growing economic and geopolitical upheaval.\u00a0\u201cThe budgets of many funds are being cut,\u201d says Bassel. \u201cOpportunities are shrinking.\u201d \u201cWe are very much grateful for all the support that we got in the first year of the war,\u201d agrees\u00a0Oleksandr Bohutskyi, CEO of Starlight Media.\u00a0\u201cBut now, the support is diminishing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/themes\/pmc-variety-2020\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\u201cMilitantropos\u201d premieres in Cannes\u2019 Directors\u2019 Fortnight section.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe\u00a0European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian Films, launched at the 2023 European Film Market, remains \u201cthe only real opportunity to get decent financing for films,\u201d Bassel says. The fund, which last year saw its budget increase to \u20ac1.5 million ($1.7 million), has supported 37 Ukrainian projects to date. But Bassel stresses that \u201cit\u2019s not enough to keep alive the whole industry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe producer, who is teaming up with France\u2019s\u00a0Vivement Lundi! and Luxembourg\u2019s a_BAHN on the hybrid animated documentary \u201cRed Zone,\u201d says she\u2019s \u201ctrying to work more with European broadcasters [and] international and European funds\u201d to make up for a domestic shortfall. Producer Eugene Rachkovsky, of the\u00a0Ukrainian film collective Tabor, whose Cannes Directors\u2019 Fortnight premiere \u201cMilitantropos\u201d is a co-production with\u00a0Austria\u2019s Mischief Films and France\u2019s Les Valseurs, insists that\u00a0the Ukrainian industry \u201cstill has huge support from the European countries,\u201d as the continent continues to rally to the defense of a country that the U.S. seems increasingly determined to turn its back on.<\/p>\n
\n\tThough Ukraine\u2019s attempts to join the E.U. have stalled, European leaders insist they will continue to support the war effort.\u00a0Last December, the country also became a full participant in the Creative Europe Media program, an E.U.-funded support mechanism that helps develop, distribute and promote European content. <\/p>\n
\n\tStill, it remains to be seen how that support will translate to the country\u2019s beleaguered screen industries, with cultural spending on the decline across the continent.<\/p>\n
\n\tDomestic funding in Ukraine, meanwhile, has cratered since the invasion, with state financing largely diverted to the war effort. The Ukrainian State Film Agency, an independent entity that has been embroiled in controversy in recent years, is now in the process of falling under the mandate of the culture ministry. Currently, the USFA is not issuing any funding calls, a situation that Bassel says \u201cdoesn\u2019t look very promising.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tNevertheless, documentary production remains robust \u2014 as evidenced by Cannes Directors\u2019 Fortnight selection \u201cMilitantropos,\u201d from the Tabor film collective, and the recent Berlinale competition entry \u201cTimestamp\u201d \u2014 as Ukrainian documentary filmmakers continue to chronicle Russian atrocities in real time. And in the absence of state support, \u201cprivate investors are very active [in film production],\u201d according to Film.UA\u2019s\u00a0Yarmoshchuk, who insists, \u201cOur people are very resilient.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tKateryna Gornostai\u2019s \u201cTimestamp\u201d competed at the Berlin Film Festival.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBerlin Film Festival<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not the strongest who survive, but those who adapt,\u201d\u00a0says Starlight\u2019s\u00a0Bohutskyi.\u00a0Last year, even as a Russian missile tore a hole through the company\u2019s Kyiv studio, production was soon underway on the 15th season of \u201cMasterChef Ukraine,\u201d with Starlight getting a helping hand from rival Film.UA, which offered some of its own studio space. It\u2019s a sign of what Bohutskyi describes as a wartime ethos of\u00a0\u201cpromoting values of cooperation, of being able to rebuild and be partners with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile the prospects for an impending peace deal seem slim, Ukrainian film and TV professionals are already laying the groundwork for what their industry will look like in the post-war period.\u00a0Daria Leygonie-Fialko, founder of the TV production company SPACE and co-founder of the Organization of Ukrainian Producers,\u00a0anticipates \u201ca huge flow of investment into content.\u201d\u00a0Yarmoshchuk says she likes to remind her overseas partners of the vast potential waiting to be tapped once a peace agreement with Russia is reached.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cUkraine is a big market. It\u2019s more than 30 million people,\u201d she says. \u201cThis is what I keep saying to my international partners: \u2018You really need to think about what you will do in Ukraine when the war ends.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cPeople are dying. Cities are being destroyed,\u201d adds Bassel. \u201cBut we are still here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Ukrainian production powerhouse Film.UA set a late-February release date for \u201cPuppies,\u201d an offbeat comedy about a woman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":103018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[6639,2000,299,332,1757,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-103017","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-cannes-film-festival","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-russia","12":"tag-trump","13":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114510861731165765","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}