DONBASS

Ukraine's Oscar Entry

It’s awards season in Los Angeles where guild members and film lovers experience the best films from around the world competing for the Academy Awards. Sergei Loznitsa’s Donbass is the Ukrainian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards. Thanks to the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, I had the privilege of watching this compelling masterpiece on November 4th at the NeueHouse on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, followed by an intimate discussion with the filmmaker himself.

Donbass is a political commentary told through thirteen segments of impressively choreographed vignettes that follows the war that has been raging in Eastern Ukraine for years and explores the mid-2010s conflict between Ukraine and the Russian-supported Donetsk People's Republic.

Loznitsa’s distinctive directorial style won him Best Director Award at Un Certain Regard section at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. The film also screened at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Munich Film Festival, Transatlantyk Festival in Lodz, Poland, and at Odessa Film Festival in Ukraine.

This cinematic symphony of true-life events sourced from newspapers, TV clips, and YouTube is Loznitsa’s latest masterpiece. Using an ensemble cast, Donbass is an absurdist composition that depicts how the war is being fought and lost in Crimea.

Since 2014, following the events of Euromaidan and the Ukrainian revolution, the war in Eastern Ukraine has been raging between pro-Russian separatists loyal to Putin and nationals whose sympathies are with Europe, NATO, and the West. Regardless of region or alliance, memories of the Second World War and Stalinist purges and famines are close to the surface of the societal psyche, where there is no neutral position and apathy is not an option.

Sergei Loznitsa was born in 1964 in Belarus but raised in Ukraine. Many of his films have won awards at international film festivals. Made in partnership with master cinematographer Oleg Mutu, Donbass is Loznitsa’s most cutting political work to date, and Ukraine's 11th foreign-language Oscar submission since 1997. 

Selected Filmography:

• 2010 My Joy (Счастье мое)

• 2012 In the Fog (В тумане)

• 2014 Maidan (Майдан)

• 2015 The Event (Событие)

• 2016 Austerlitz (Аустерлиц)

• 2017 A Gentle Creature (Лагідна)

• 2018 Donbass (Донбас)

• 2018 The Trial (Процесс)