During the Vilnius queer festival \u201cKreiv\u0117s\u201d (taking place on September 7\u201311), I am talking with two directors from Ukraine \u2013 Olena Siyatovska and Zhanna Ozirna. Siyatovska\u2019s short film \u201cI am Michelle\u201d (2021) about a young transgender girl\u2019s life and dreams in Kiyv is part of the competition programme. \u201cBond\u201d (2018) by Ozirna follows the one-year-long coming out process for a normal-looking family. Both directors have come to Vilnius for the festival.<\/p>\n
You both make movies that are documentaries. What about documentary cinema attracts you?<\/strong><\/p>\n Olena Siyatovska:<\/strong> It\u2019s my first film. I started with documentaries because it was easier. I wanted to be as close to reality as possible. I think the story found me and I needed to film it.<\/p>\n Zhanna Ozirna:<\/strong> I like Olena\u2019s explanation about how the story finds you, because I also believe in this. I shot this film many years ago. The film is about my family and about me as well. I chose to film a documentary because it was a really difficult time in my life and this was a pretty regular way to understand how to solve some issues. I started to make a film out of it. It started more as psychotherapy, but turned into something much bigger.<\/p>\n Olena, how did you meet Michele, the main character of your film? How did you decide to make a documentary about her? How is she doing right now?<\/strong><\/p>\n Olena:<\/strong> It was two years ago. I was at the art residency, because I am mostly an artist. The residency was organized by the Ukrainian platform \u201cIzolyatsia\u201d and connected with Kyiv Pride. The main topics were video and LGBTQ+.<\/p>\n When I started thinking about my work, I thought about documentary film, because for me it seemed like the right way. And I tried to find a character for the film. Then, I met three girls and one of them was Michelle.<\/p>\n When I met her, I understood that I wanted to make a film about her, because I was very impressed with her personal story. During the first evening we spent together, she told me a lot about herself and her family. She was very open. I understood that she also wanted to take part in this project. Sometimes she reminds me of myself many many years ago. It was a special connection and an immediate match.<\/p>\n After that we talked sometimes, spent time together and started filming step by step. From a very small story it became a bit longer. So we spent two years together and that\u2019s how this film was created.<\/p>\n Yesterday, I saw that Michelle visited her family in their village, in the Lviv region, which is shown in our film. But mostly she lives in Kyiv, where she returned from her native village maybe a month or two ago. She\u2019s working and trying to continue her ordinary life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the Vilnius queer festival \u201cKreiv\u0117s\u201d (taking place on September 7\u201311), I am talking with two directors from Ukraine \u2013 Olena Siyatovska and Zhanna Ozirna….","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2912"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2982,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912\/revisions\/2982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festivaliskreives.lt\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}