Kateryna Gornostai: Maidan Everywhere

Synopsis from director: This film tells the story of the previous year, that for me began, when Maidan had started and maybe didn’t end yet. The whole year we have lived in the atmosphere of revolution, then war. Whatever you did – you saw this things on the background, you always mean them, although you live not even on a border of war, but deep in the rear. I want to remember this year, I want to keep the memory of all the people who surrounded me. The year of Maidan, the year marked by war and peace…

And the director does so in a film that is impressionistic in style, a bit difficult to grap when it comes to montage principles, but it lives through its obvious presence in situations, through the joy and enthusiasm that comes from the screen. A fine framed location is the Red Square in Moscow: the young woman unfolds at the end of the film the Ukranian flag, has to pack it away, when the police arrives, she does so with a smile and whispers “Maidan is Everywhere”, as she said in the beginning as well… There are some great scenes from private appartments, where the youngsters live, and from the countryside, I would have loved to have more of that. Maybe a small fatigue is coming to me now after many Maidan-films.

Ukraine, 2015, 36 mins.

The film won the Andriy Matrosov Award from the DocuDays Organization Committee at the DocuDays UA 2015. Motivation: For the victorious spirit of freedom.

PS. Words about Andriy Matrosov from the website of the festival: Andriy Matrosov was an unusual person. Everything he did, he did with much creation and love. In his incomplete 42 years of life, Andriy had time to become photoartist, cameraman, journalist, human rights activist, the head of journalist association “South”, film producer and producer of Docudays UA festival. And the main thing – he was a man who lived with an open heart, who put all his forces into good and useful deeds.