The Tribe
Ústí nad Labem is a beautiful region in the Czech Republic. Olga is a Czech farmer who moved to the village of Janska when she was 27 years old. The peace and power of nature give her strength and inspiration to work. During her assimilation, Olga managed to solve many tasks. Although her husband left her alone with her mother and child, Olga successfully built her life in a new place. She started a farm, began selling cheese, and is now working on her next project - building her own house.
Olexi and Ruslana started working on the film as a directing duo, to create a portrait of the family, the work on the farm, and the experience passed on from generation to generation. When they met Olga, their attention was drawn to her innate feelings of love of life, resilience, gentle strength, and lightness at the same time. Observing her work, her life, and her family, the directors are convinced that all the vectors of this story are directed to Olga, she is the core that gathers the whole family around her, creating her own special microcosm.
Everything would have been fine until Olga's daughter Maya returns to the farm, straining the relationship between Olga and her mother Irina, who cannot accept her granddaughter's growing authority.
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Countries: Czech Republic, Ukraine (eidos.productions LLC)
Languages: Czech
Runtime: 85’
Observational documentary-drama with elements of comedy
Directors: Ruslana Kaminska, Олексій Чубун
Producers: Olha Symonenko
Unknown history
"From: Kyiv
To: Chornobyl /25, 2-ha Orekhivka St., Kyiv region/ V.G. Pinchuk
22.01.1986
Hello, my beloved Vovochka!
I arrived successfully, at 2 p.m. I was already at home. What a beautiful road is from Chornobyl to Kyiv! You know, I even don’t feel the difference in distance between the two cities. Chornobyl has become the second home for me, just because you live there, my sweetheart. Vovka, darling, how miserable our quarrels and grudges are compare to such a big feeling as our Love. And I’m saving this feeling as life, as faith in god…"
Documentary photographer Maxim Dondyuk and his brother, filmmaker Mykola Dondyuk spent several years traveling around the abandoned settlements of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone in search of the life stories of the people who lived there before the disaster. Maksym restores films, family photos, and letters found in abandoned houses that have been damaged by radiation. He is creating a unique archive and online museum:
“Today, everyone associates Chornobyl with the tragedy at the nuclear power plant and its consequences. But what if we went back to those prosperous times that were so far away from the events of 1986?”
This is Unknown History, a film that Mykola is working on as he observes the ‘excavations of a lost city’ and the painstaking work of reconstructing everyday history. Despite the radiation, fires, and looting, hundreds of family stories wiped out by the ‘peaceful atom’ become a portal to the past.
More than five years of work by the brothers reveals Chornobyl from a different perspective, through stories lost in time before the nuclear power plant was built and its disaster. History unknown to the world and lost to hundreds of thousands of people.
Great work on memory preservation. Looking for partners!
