Ukrainian Holodomor through children’s eyes

Short film with a working title Red Necklace will be made based on a real family story. Its author Tetiana Kondrashevska told at the press conference that this is a story from the life of a family in times of famine of 1932-33. Even though the film’s idea was not about showing all the horrors of the Great Famine, the authors want to recreate the real picture of the time. The film director Karen Karapetyan wants to show what saved people during the famine. “Apart from death and suffering, Ukrainian peasants also had love, faith, and loyalty, as well as care for their loved ones. Family values were especially important during the hard ordeal and helped many to survive,” said Karapetyan.

The plot of the film is simple and is based on the life situation where a happy family is deprived of their support: the father of the family, who went in search of food, disappeared and mother together with her daughter due to the deep faith and fortitude managed to survive and finally meet their father home. “Famine of 1933 was the most difficult time for the Ukrainian village. A little girl, main character of this film, faced this hardship at time when she still wanted to play with toys. But life deprived her not only of kids’ joys, but also of any food. She matured when she was only seven. She had to realize where laid the border between life and death,” said Kondrashevska. Producer Halyna Tarasiuk siad that now they are actively looking for a young actress for this challenging role. Creative team together managed to find funding for the making of the film – 55,000 hryvnias. They are now engaged in further search of interested people and organizations who want to and are able to support the idea of the film both informationally and financially. The ultimate goal of the creative team is truly noble: they want to pay tribute to the memory of the past generations. After all, the main character of the movie is now an elderly woman named Antonina and she is still living. “In our time, not many people are interested in lives of their grandmothers and grandfathers, and hardly anyone knows who their distant ancestors were. We want to interest people with this film so that they would think about the importance of knowing their history. Thanks to the experience of our ancestors we can move forward smoother,” thinks film director Karapetyan.