Co-produced by Belsat: Film about Crimean Tatars deportation awarded at festival in Amsterdam
The documentary by Polish director Aniela Astrid Gabryel ‘When Will This Wins Stop’ has won the 2016 Award for Best Student Documentary at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
The film that was co-produced by Belsat TV tells viewers about the present-day ‘self-deportation’ of Crimean Tatar families broken by the Russian occupation.
The jury consisted of Judy Kibinge (Kenya), Salome Machaidze (Georgia) and Daan Veldhuizen (The Netherlands).
According to the jury, the creators of the film needed to have courage and great artistic skills, which are seen in the visual design and in a caring and gentle approach to their characters. In spite of a complicated political situation, the authors managed to show not only intimate stories of individuals, but developments of human history as well, they stressed.
[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”398969″ img_size=”large”][vc_column_text]
The title of this documentary about the Russian occupation of the Crimea works on two levels. There’s the literal level, when the grandmother of the family portrayed complains about the weather. But there’s also the symbolic level: the title is an indictment of the Russian occupation, which has descended upon the Crimea like a dark storm. A short timeline shows us that Crimea was occupied by Stalin in the 1940s. In 1944, Josef Stalin ordered to deport over 250,000 Crimean Tatars to Asian Soviet republics. Following the fall of the Iron Curtain, the original Crimean Tatars returned to their peninsula.
Unfortunately, at the moment history is repeating itself and Crimean Tatars have to depart again. This same generation is once again being driven from their homes by an aggressive show of force by Vladimir Putin. In four overlapping stories, film director Aniela Astrid Gabryel shows the influence of the occupation on different generations: parents talking to children they can no longer live with on Skype, meanwhile caring for their own parents, who have been through the same thing before. These family members are risking their lives by appearing in the film – this is why their surnames aren’t included in the credits.
To shoot the film, the Polish-Ukrainian film crew visited the annexed peninsula four times.
“A lot of people helped us and this scene is an example of a first idea for the narrative structure of the movie – based on an undercover travel with activists. We were secretly moving among different families who created a network of people supporting one another in these hard times. It was hard to illustrate the force of the regime, because any public outings with the camera could end the filming and cause problems to the protagonists,” the young director says.
The producer of the film co-financed by the Polish Film Institute is Everest Film Studio; its co-producer is Belsat TV. The script was created as part of the project ‘The Young About The Young’.
belsat.eu
