Two Ukrainian films received awards at the Berlinale

The Ukrainian films "This Date" and "Waking up in Silence" received awards at the Berlin International Film Festival.

Ukrainian State Film Agency reports this on Facebook.

The Ukrainian-German documentary film "Waking Up in Silence" by Mila Zhluktenko and Daniel Asadi Faezi received a special award for the best short film in the Generation Kplus program at the Berlin Film Festival. The film tells about the war through the eyes of Ukrainian refugee children in Germany and their mothers.

The plot shows the audience how one summer day, refugee children from Ukraine found military symbols from the Second World War in a former German barracks. Attributes of the past in the games of small heroes are intertwined with completely non-childish real experience. They write: "putin, stop killing people." on the sidewalk.

The "Berlinale" jury explained their decision by the fact that they wanted to award a film that "offers a tender look at the daily rhythms of a broken childhood."

"The lighthearted intimacy of this film is a testament to enduring joy, strength and innocence in the face of profound loss. We were moved by the film's confident approach. It powerfully evokes a sense of place and history as it offers an important snapshot of the relevant present," the jury's statement says.

But the short film "This Date," directed by Nadiya Parfan, received a special award from the international jury. This is a sketch of wartime Kyiv, in which, despite the dramatic events, life continues. The 5-minute movie tape was filmed in one shot.

Jury members of the film festival compared this movie with the short film of the same name by Claude Lelouch. However, they note that the director managed to turn the French story "into something more complex, where the urgency has reasons."

"Instead of Parisian parks, we see makeshift metal garages. Army checkpoints take the place of the Arc de Triomphe. French hotels are replaced by abandoned buildings, and a church surrounded by cannons replaces the Sacre Coeur Basilica," the jury's statement reads.