Documentary film project by Ukrainian filmmaker Kateryna Hornostai wins Eurimage award at CPH:Forum
CPH:Forum, the industry section of the CPH:DOX International Documentary Film Festival in Copenhagen, has announced its awards.
One of these awards was given to the documentary about education during the war, Tape of Time, directed by Kateryna Hornostai, which is being developed by the Osvitoria NGO in cooperation with the 2Brave Productions production company.
The film project by Ukrainian filmmaker Kateryna Hornostai received the Eurimages New Lab Outreach Award in the amount of €30,000. The award aims to raise public awareness of innovative and experimental projects at the end of production or in post-production.
The filming of the documentary Tape of Time was initiated by the Osvitoria NGO to demonstrate the impact of a full-scale war on education and the lives of students and teachers. According to the head of the union, Zoya Lytvyn, the film is not only a chronicle of education in war, but also "a tool to show the world community that education is a crucial area and that Ukrainian students and teachers are doing everything possible and impossible to continue teaching and learning, including in the frontline and de-occupied territories." The footage from the upcoming documentary can be seen in the official teaser for the Global Teacher Prize Ukraine 2023.
CPH:Forum funds creative, risky and visually strong documentary film projects. The jury members praised The Time Tape as a film of high cinematic quality that eschews traditional narrative structures. "This film presents a shaded way of life in a war-torn country, and we hope that this award will help it find a wide international audience," they added.
The running time of The Time Tape is 90 minutes.
The film is scheduled for release in early 2025.
"Pitchings are always stressful, because they determine how loudly a future film will be heard at festivals. But now, during a large-scale war, the responsibility has increased many times over, also because documentaries have an educational function. Every opportunity to go abroad and show a piece of documentary material about Ukrainian modernity is an important tool for influencing people to take an interest in Ukraine, to empathise with it and help it. Moreover, our project has an interesting angle on the war: we don't show it in the frame, but it is reflected in every air raid alert, in every bomb shelter, in every face of a child or a teacher at a Ukrainian school," says Kateryna Hornostai.
Kateryna Hornostai is one of Ukraine's most acclaimed filmmakers, and her previous film Stop Earth won numerous awards in Ukraine and around the world, including the Crystal Bear Generation 14+ award at Berlinale 2021.
