Ukrainian War Refugees in the Latest Focus of Docmaker Olha Zhurba

Ukrainian director Olha Zorba and producer Daria Basil are collaborating on a documentary on the refugee crisis in Ukraine after their latest collaboration, ‘Outside’, which premiered at CPH:DOX this year in Copenhagen.

The project, titled “Displaced,” is being produced by Basil’s Kyiv-based production team, Moon Man in a co-production with Germany’s Koberstein Film and Denmark’s Final Cut for Real.

Zhurba began filming not long after the Russian invasion on February 24, capturing the thousands of Kyiv residents who flocked to the capital’s railway station for safety. It is now in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city and the site of fierce fighting in recent weeks. “The material is very strong,” Basil said. “I couldn’t even watch it more than once.”

Basil, who is in Cannes as part of the Producers Network’s Ukrainian Producers Under the Spotlight initiative, is looking for funding, potential co-production partners and sales agents willing to join the film in the film’s early development stages.

She is also a producer in Roman Bondarchuk’s “Editor’s Office”, a co-production with Daria Averchenko (Southern Films) and Tanya Georgieva Waldhauer (Elemag Pictures), which is presented during Tallinn Black Nights Goes to Cannes. “State” (pictured) is also in development, the debut of director Nikon Romanchenko.

Basil’s credits include “A House Made of Splinters,” Simon Leering Wilmont’s documentary that won a Director’s Award at Sundance this year. As producer and organizer of the Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Festival in Kyiv, she has been busy advocating for Ukrainian filmmakers internationally since the war began while also helping to organize relief efforts on the home front.

“We can’t just be filmmakers right now. We are all citizens first,” she said. “A lot of filmmakers have joined the military and are fighting on the front lines now. Some became refugees and were forced to leave the country. Some of them are volunteers and don’t have time to make movies.”

It is this urgency that makes her Ukrainian colleagues’ efforts on Croisette this week even more vital, she added. “Being in Cannes is a possibility to stand up for our country and talk more about Ukraine, and explain why we are calling for more space for Ukrainian voices.”



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