W ZAWIESZENIU – IN LIMBO
Alina Maksimenko | Poland 2024 | 71 Min. | Ukrainian, Russian with engl. Subtitles
Austrian Premiere
TUESDAY, 13.05. | 9:30 pm
Votiv Kino, Gr. Saal | TICKETS
At the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression, Director Alina Maksimenko lives in Irpin. She packs her cat and her camera and flees from the approaching front to her parents’ home north-west of Kyiv. In fact, she wants to go further, to take herself and her parents to safety behind the border. But they stay. While they hope that the situation will calm down, the threatening noise of war becomes louder and louder. Caught in an increasingly unbearable limbo, everyday activities and worrying about the cats left behind in the neighborhood provide an ostensible sense of calm and normality.
W ZAWIESZENIU is not dedicated to the violent images of war, but to a meticulous portrait of waiting and the power of survival.
presented by
Director: Alina Maksimenko
Camera: Alina Maksimenko
Editing: Feliks Mamczur
Sound: Joanna Napieralska, Sergiey Chegodayev
Music: Vladimir Tarasov
Producer: Michał Nowak
Production: Filip Marczewski, Katarzyna Madaj-Kozłowska
AWARDS & SCREENINGS (SELECTION)
Visions du Réel International Film Festival (2024, Switzerland), 2024 (competition)
European Film Awards 2024, 2 EFA Nominations: for Best Film, for Best Documentary Film 2024
40th Warsaw Film Festival (2024, Poland), 2024 (screening)
Ji.hlava (2024, Czech Republic), 2024 (screening)
DOK Leipzig (2024, Germany), 2024 (screening)
Cork International Film Festival (2024, Ireland, 2024 (screening)
Millenium Docs Against Gravity (Poland 2024), 2024 (competition)
Doc Alliance Award 2024 nomination
DMZ Docs International Documentary Film Festival (2024, South Korea), 2024 (Grand Prize)
Lubuskie Film Summer 2024, Poland (Golden Grape Award for Best Documentary)
DokuBaku International Film Festival (2024, Azerbaijan), 2024 (competition)
Doclisboa International Film Festival (2024, Portugal), 2024 (competition)
Trieste Film Festival 2025, Italy (competition)
Special Mention Award at BIDF 2025, Hungary (competition)
Big Sky Documentary Film Festival 2025, USA (competition)
ArtDoc Fest 2025, Riga, Latvia (competition)
Neisse Film Festival 2025, Germany (competition)
BIOGRAPHY
Alina Maksimenko is an artist born in Kyiv, Ukraine. She is a painter, film director, and director of photography. From 1985 to 1988, she studied at T.G. Shevchenko Art School and graduated from the Mykhailo Boichuk Kyiv State Academy of Decorative-Applied Arts and Design. Additionally, she completed her studies in documentary film directing under Sergey Bukovsky at the Radio Broadcasting and Press Institute, as well as the DOK PRO program at Wajda School.
Maksimenko’s interest in documentary filmmaking began in 2014 with her first exhibition of video installations at the Kyiv Arsenal. Her short documentary ‘Ptitsa’ (2022) received the Main Award at the It’s All True! International Documentary Film Festival in Brazil, the Andrei Matrosov Award at Docudays UA, and the Award for Best Direction at the Astra Film Festival in Romania. Her feature documentary debut, ‘W zawieszeniu’ (In Limbo), premiered in 2024 at the international competition of Visions du Réel and received 2 EFA Nominations.
