Film phase:Production
SYNOPSIS
The film depicts the mass tragedy of people who came face to face with a large-scale war. Events unfold in different parts of Ukraine from the first days of the war and up to the present day. It captures a collective portrait of Ukrainians fleeing the grindstones of war, and those who stayed and are forced to adapt to life under constant shelling.
Songs of Slow Burning Earth (previously Displaced) is a 2022 Critical Issues Fund grantee.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Olha Zhurba (she/her) is a Ukrainian filmmaker who studied at the Ukranian Film School. She has more than 10 years of experience in the audiovisual sector, first working as a director and an editor of commercials, music videos, and film trailers before moving to filmmaking. Her first short fiction film Dad’s Sneakers (2021) premiered in the shorts competition at Locarno Film Festival and shortly after won the Best Ukrainian Short and FIPRESCI awards at Odesa International Film Festival. It was also awarded the National Film Critics Award Kinokolo, Best European Film at Leuven Film Festival, and was a candidate for a nomination at the European Film Awards 2022. Outside (2022) is Olha’s first feature-length documentary which premiered at CPH:DOX and Hot Docs. She is also an editor of festival hits, such as award-winning documentary films This Rain Will Never Stop (2021) by Alina Gorlova and Home Games (2018) by Alisa Kovalenko.
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
In 2011, Darya Bassel (she/her) joined the team of Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival in Kyiv where she still works as a programmer and head of industry. Parallel to her work at the festival, she also works in film production. The first film she worked on as associate producer and festival agent was My Father is my Mother’s Brother, directed by Vadym Ilkov, which was coined the most innovative film in the International Competition at the 2018 Visions du Réel Awards. In 2019, she and Vika Khomenko launched the film production company, Moon Man. The company focuses on creative documentary and fiction films with a strong authorial director’s approach. In 2022, Moon Man’s first production, the documentary Outside, had its world premiere at CPH:DOX. Darya was also co-producer of the award-winning documentary A House Made of Splinters, directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont. She has served on juries at numerous festivals, including IDFA, Visions du Réel, Krakow IFF, One World. She was also invited by the Ukrainian film production company, TABOR, to co-produce Maksym Nakonechnyi’s debut feature, Butterfly Vision, which premiered in Cannes 2022, in the Un Certain Regard.