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Photo: usfa.gov.ua
Ukrainian feature motion picture “Stop-Zemlia” (Stop-Earth) by director Kateryna Gornostai received a “Crystal Bear” award for the best film from the Youth Jury in the Berlinale’s competition Generation 14plus. This is one of the most important awards of the festival, and it is for the first time the Ukrainian movie wins it.
UATV reports this referring to the Ukrainian State Film Agency.
“The film convincingly covers a variety of important topics which appeal to us as young people. Platonic love, queerness, solidarity and psychological stress reinforce the effect of the film as an authentic coming-of-age story. By virtue of creative visualisation techniques, it becomes clear in an artistic manner how our generation dreams, feels and experiences life. The message is conveyed that it is part of life to face certain fears in order to be able to enjoy the most exciting years of youth”, – the statement of the Berlinale Youth Jury in the competition Generation 14plus says.
Director Kateryna Gornostai has also written the movie script.
“Stop-Zemlia” is a sensual autobiographic story about exploring oneself. 16-year-old Masha is a student of the 11th grade in an ordinary school in Kyiv. Her close friends Yana and Senia help her avoid feeling strange and detached among other schoolkids. While they also live through the tense everyday life in school their own way. Besides expectation of the upcoming exams, Masha leaves her comfort zone falling in love with her classmate Sasha. She understands, if she doesn’t take courage, she’ll never know will there be any answer.
In two weeks, on June 9-10, the movie will be released in the cinemas of Berlin withtin the frameworks of the second part of this year’s Berlinale.
In Ukraine the film is planned to be released in cinemas in the second half of 2021.
Earlier, two Ukrainian movies received the awards of the Festival in Riga .
