Iryna Tsilyk: The Earth is Blue Like an Orange
It is an emotional journey that director and writer Iryna Tsilyk takes the viewer on. For 74 minutes. One full of beauty. Very much because of the mother in the film, Anna, the protagonist, whose face expresses, what it means to live in the war zone in Eastern Ukraine with four children, and her mother. You see her alone in the kitchen, worried, in a melancholic mood, that is understandable on the background of the war – she decided to stay with the family; they could have moved. You see her smilingly telling one of her small boys how to pull out a rock tooth! You see her fighting with the stove to make the house warm. You see her taking the train with one of her daughters, Myroslava, who wishes to study cinematography. They come to an eximanation – in Kiev it must be – the girl thinks she failed. They get a phone call, she did not fail, daughter and mother cries of happiness. So did this viewer!
The house of the family is full of life with stairs to the cellar, where they go
down, when the bombing is close. Cats are all over, a turtle is occupying the sink, a house that is also the location for a film to be shot, realised by Anna and her two daughters Myroslava and Nastia with the smaller boys, the grandmother and an aunt to be among the characters. A film in the film. The narrative. You see the preparations for the shoot, hard discussions at the table on scenes, the theme is like “how to live in a war zone”, and we are invited to the premiere, where Iryna Tsilyk with her cameraperson puts the focus on the faces of the viewers, emotions again. “It’s a film about our family and our city”, says the mother to the audience at the premiere. And thus also to us, who through the yes of Iryna Tsilyk have seen a film about a family and a city. It’s all there. The devastated buildings with holes from rockets, the lack of… well everything that we take for granted. Observed with respect and love for Life. And a feeling for details like when Myroslava graduates from school, dressed wonderfully for the occasion. Like when one of the boys plays the accordion accompanied by his singing KukKuk, or the other boy in the beginning of the film in the ”talking to the camera” sequence does not know what to say… Like when, I could go on. Lovely.
Irina Tsilyk has published books with her poems, translated to several languages. And she knows Paul Eluard, from him comes the title. Poetic title for a poetic film.
The film won an award at the Sundance Festival for directing. It goes now to the Berlinale and a lot of other festivals, I am sure.
Below, please find a link to an interview with the director made by one of the supporters of the film, Current Time TV.
https://en.currenttime.tv/a/30420227.html
Ukraine/ Lithuania, 2020, 74 mins.
