this human world: Eastern Front Event

SHIDNIY FRONT
Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko, LV/UK/CZ/US, 2023
98 min., OmeU

The international human rights film festival this human world is pleased to host a special one-time screening of the internationally acclaimed documentary, EASTERN FRONT, followed by a Q&A at Schikaneder Kino. The Q&A will feature director Yevhen Titarenko and producer Natalia Khazan along with moderators Luca Faccio and Thomas Seifert.

On 24 February 2022, Yevhen, together with his friends, volunteered to join the first aid battalion on the front line. They provided life-saving support and evacuation of the injured. This film reveals the experiences of these young men over six months full of drama, despair, fear, hatred, bitterness, love, and, most importantly, faith in victory. As they left for the front, they sent their families to the rear – to a village in western Ukraine. All of them come to this idyllic place for a couple of days to baptize the nine-month-old son of one of our protagonists. As soon as they rise from the celebratory feast, they have to go back to the front.

Yevhen Titarenko is a filmmaker and graduate of the Mykolaychuk Institute of Visual Arts. After the beginning of the temporary occupation of Crimea by Russia in 2014, he left his film production business and Crimea, going to the front line as a documentary filmmaker. After he was evacuated from Donetsk airport, he signed up as a volunteer for the Hospitallers medical battalion. He has continued volunteering for the Hospitallers medical battalion since then.

Natalia Khazan is a Ukrainian film producer, public figure, volunteer, and honored art worker of Ukraine. She is one of the producers of EASTERN FRONT (which had its international premiere at Berlinale in 2023) and the founder of Braha Production Company. In her career, she has produced seventeen documentaries for film and television, founded and organized cultural projects, and headed advertising and PR campaigns.

Luca Faccio is an international artist-photographer, TV director-producer for RAI in Italy and ORF in Austria, and freelance news journalist based in Vienna. He has covered the 1992 war in Bosnia, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and shot several documentaries in North Korea.

Thomas Seifert is Editor in Chief of the quarterly “European Voices.” He has reported on international crises and wars including those in Chechnya, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nagorno Karabakh and Ukraine.

*not included in the nonstop Kinoabo