In Kyiv, Cinema Continues: LIM² Supports 12 Ukrainian Filmmakers

At the invitation of the Odesa International Film Festival (OIFF), whose activities were moved to Kyiv this year for security reasons, lim² | less is more’s screenwriter-consultants (Dancing Partners), Antoine Le Bos and Vassili Silovic, travelled to Kyiv to lead a Boosting Ideas workshop with 12 Ukrainian filmmakers. The workshop aimed to explore the early stages of their stories and strengthen their projects at an early stage of development.

Boosting Ideas workshops are pre-writing workshops developed by lim² | less is more in collaboration with its partners across Europe. They support filmmakers at the very beginning of their projects, helping them explore their initial ideas and strengthen the foundations of their stories.

The week was an experience of rare intensity, both professionally and personally. With drone attacks continuing throughout the week, the workshop took place entirely in an air-raid shelter. Our Dancing Partners were able to witness first-hand the stress and suffering experienced by Ukrainian society after almost four and a half years of war. The filmmakers’ faces bore witness to nights disrupted by the sirens that fill the city, and to the uncertainty of what might happen from one moment to the next. Their projects, in turn, reflected the deep scars left by the war across the country.

The workshop brought together both fiction and documentary projects, a combination rarely explored, but made possible by the strength and quality of the projects. The openness of the participants fostered a genuine spirit of collaboration and mutual support.

The workshop brought together fiction and documentary projects, a combination that is rarely explored but that the quality of the projects made possible. The participants’ openness gave rise to a genuine spirit of collaboration and mutual support.

The workshop came to an end at the same time as the festival. The elegant and festive closing ceremony, while celebrating an outstanding selection of films, also carried a powerful symbolic message: drones and missiles will not stop us from making and watching films. The OIFF is yet another testament to the fact that the Ukrainian people will not yield to the aggressor and will continue to resist.

Le Groupe Ouest and lim² | less is more are proud to have taken part in this event, to have witnessed the immense talent of a whole generation of Ukrainian filmmakers, and to have transformed an air-raid shelter into a warm and welcoming cocoon, conducive to developing ideas of great richness.

Thank you to all the festival organisers for their warm welcome and incredible commitment, and thank you to the 12 filmmakers we had the privilege of working with, who moved us with their intensity and talent: Tonia Noyabrova, Kyrylo Zemlyanyi, Zhanna Ozirna, Oleksandra Pletenetska, Valeriia Kalchenko, Nadia Parfan, Anton Shtuka, Mykola Nosok, Alla Mitiukova, Snizhana Gusarevych, Nadiia Rokytianska, Katya Tsarik