The film by the Ukrainian filmmaker Oksana Karpovych Don’t Worry, the Doors Will Open, which premiered at the 17th Docudays UA, returns to our DOCUSPACE online cinema! From 11 May, watch the film in the Ukrainian Doc: Favorites selection.
Shot over summer and winter seasons on the elektrychka, a typical Soviet commuter train that travels between Kyiv and several small provincial towns, Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open invites us to share a ride with working-class, mostly marginalised passengers and vendors. Following a number of people and families from one grimy wagon to another, from station to station, we are immersed in their everyday struggles and learn about the dilemmas of building a new post-revolutionary identity. Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open is an atmospheric and intensely human vérité portrait of Ukrainian society on the move.
“In the 1990s, suburban electric trains were a significant component of reality and the main means of transportation for my parents, just like the majority of ordinary Ukrainian workers in the regions. These trains have left strong tactile and audial memories which started to come to the surface after I moved abroad,” noted Oksana Karpovych in aninterviewfor the 17th Docudays UA’s Festival Guide. “A suburban train attracts me with its wretchedness and beauty at once; it’s a space of many contradictions and a bundle of absurdity which fills our daily life in Ukraine. Strangely enough, when I was far from home, it became interesting and valuable for me to understand my post-Soviet identity and the identity of my country.”
