PHOTOPHOBIA, the new film by Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekarčík, was awarded the "Europe Cinemas" label at the Venice Film Festival.
Europe Cinemas is a cinema network for the promotion of European film. Financial support is provided to cinemas that show a set minimum percentage of European films.
PHOTOPHOBIA screened in Venice in the "Giornati degli Autori" section. Ostrochovský and Pekarčík observe a group of children who spend everyday war time in Ukraine under Russian missile fire in a Kyiv subway station - weeks without daylight, between fear and hope. Somehow they try to make the best of this situation as well, and so in the midst of the war, in the midst of grief and despair, something almost like lightness emerges.
PHOTOPHOBIA will be screened at the 33rd FilmFestival Cottbus in the series Spotlight: Ukraine. The series shows the current everyday life in Ukraine, between everyday war and trauma on the one hand and the search for normality on the other. Other sections of the FilmFestival Cottbus will again feature numerous films about and especially from Ukraine, showing that the film scene there continues to be one of the most creative in Europe. In terms of content and art, an admirable cinematic diversity between drama and comedy, between coming-of-age film and social reflection is emerging.
Slovak director and producer Ivan Ostrochovský has long had ties to Ukraine; in 2021 he co-produced the FFC-winning film 107 MOTHERS (Slovakia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, directed by Péter Kerekes), which was filmed in the women's prison in Odesa.