Palingenesion explores the perception of death in the Russian-Ukrainian war versus the fight for life. Through personal stories, it reflects on shared grief, collective trauma, and resilience. Amid loss, Ukrainians navigate pain together, witnessing the rebirth of a deep thirst for life.
The film Palingenesion moves across the angle of the perception of death. From the unrealized fact of death among the animals, through the disfigured image of death in the media optics and to the personal human story. Gradually the scale growth unfolds the quantity of such stories. In the endless flow of the civilian burials in Chernihiv, fallen soldiers' mournings and mass graves exhumations in Bucha and Izium there are glimpses of separate people’s stories, for whom it becomes a personal sorrow. Through their perspective the influence of mass war crimes to the collective mind of the people is expressed.
CREW:
Script: Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova, Simon Mozgovyi, Maksym Nakonechnyi
DOP: Viacheslav Tsvietkov, Denis Melnik, Khrystyna Lizogub
Sound: Mykhailo Zakutskyi
Music: Peter Kutin
Production:
Funding:
Already engaged financial partners and funds: Austrian Film Institute, Vienna Film Fund, Film Institute, Creative Europe MEDIA, Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport (Special Aid for Ukrainian Artists), SWR (Südwestrundfunk), ARTE, Sundance Documentary Film Program with support from Open Society Foundations, IDFA Bertha Fund (The Netherlands), European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian Films
Sales:
Point of contact:
Festivals
Participant of Berlinale Talents (Doc Station, 2023), VdR–Industry at Visions du Réel (VSE Award, 2023), IDFA Forum (Rough Cut Presentation, Special Mention, 2023), Cannes Docs at Marché du Film – Festival de Cannes (Arte: Generation Ukraine, 2024), DOK Leipzig (Rough Cut Presentation, Arte: Generation Ukraine, 2023).
