The Forgotten
Zabuti
dir. Daria Onyshchenko
Ukraine / Switzerland, 2019 - 105
Nina is 30 and a Ukrainian language teacher. She lives in Luhansk, a city in eastern Ukraine, in territory occupied by pro-Russian separatists. She cannot leave the city, but neither can she continue teaching Ukrainian. She is forced to go to retraining courses for teaching Russian instead. One day she crosses paths with 17-year-old Andriy who was orphaned in the aftermath of the war. He places the Ukrainian flag on the school roof and winds up in the hands of the police. Living in a world of injustice, Nina realizes that Andriy could face long jail time. She decides to act… Director’s statement: “This story is dedicated to the displaced people of eastern Ukraine and Crimea as well as all those people who have remained in the occupied regions against their will. I tried to show reality as it is, without hiding the facts. It was important for me to say that people have their own hopes and dreams in occupied regions as well. They fall in love, and they deserve to have a future”.
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