The jury board of the international WARSCAPE competition has chosen “Double Trap” project by director Valeriya Treshchova and producer Viktoriya Gusenok. The documentalists received a grant for the production of a short movie, which tells the story of the director’s father, who is trying to rediscover himself. Living in Donetsk city, he suffers from retrograde amnesia, and every day of his life resembles “The Groundhog Day”. Besides this, he is trapped into double isolation between his lost memory and new reality in the city. The International Committee of the Red Cross delegation (ICRC) in Ukraine and Docudays UA invited Eurasian emerging documentary filmmakers from to submit projects which focus on human suffering due to the immediate impact war has on civilians’lives, as well as the consequences of war and violence that often remain for decades.
“Showing the reality of civilians who are caught in the middle of an armed conflict and giving them a voice is as much important as providing them with food or water, said Alain Aeschliman, head of ICRC delegation in Ukraine at the closing ceremony of the 14th International documentary films about human rights festival DocudaysUA in Kyiv. This is why our organisation awards and supports documentary work be it cinema, television or photo in many countries where we work. I am very glad to give our first Warscape award to a documentary project that shows how war disrupts family life and profoundly affects people for years”.
According to the director Valeriya Treshchova, this film is a message about hopelessness. “Hopelessness of war will be shown through the story of my father, who is not anymore the person I knew before the war. Now I learn to show my feelings and to forgive, because ‘tomorrow’ may never come. The war reminds us about it every second,” explains the director.
The selection committee of the contest received 45 applications from Armenia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Russia, Poland and Ukraine. Six projects were selected. Their directors and producers were invited to the international festival Docudays UA and participated in a two-day training that helped them to get ready for the final pitching. They also learned about important concepts of international humanitarian law, also called ‘the rules of war’ as well as mental consequences of conflict and violence on civilians.
WARSCAPE is an international competition for documentary filmmakers who have projects related to long-term consequences of war conflicts for the civilians in Eurasia. Organizers of the competition: International Committee of the Red Cross delegation (ICRC) in Ukraine and Docudays UA.
