WHEN SPRING CAME TO BUCHA
Mila Teshaieva, Marcus Lenz | Ukraine, Germany 2022 | 66 Min. | Ukranian with Engl. subtitles
MONDAY, 08.05. | 9:15 pm
De France, Saal 1 | TICKETS
Austrian Premiere
In presence of Mila Teshaieva
After the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the Russian army bombed Butcha and other towns in the region. When it withdrew a month later, all that was left from massacre of Butcha were bombed houses and destroyed lives. The trauma of war is written on the faces of survivors and volunteers, but with the first blossoms of spring, Ukrainians also reveal their resilience.
Over the course of several weeks, Mila Teshaieva and Marcus Lenz accompany the residents as they pick themselves up from the smoldering ruins. WHEN SPRING CAME TO BUCHA is a stirring testimony and memorial to the atrocities of war, but also an expression of hope for peace and a sign of the victory of humanity over injustice.
Director: Mila Teshaieva, Marcus Lenz
Camera: Mila Teshaieva, Marcus Lenz
Editing: Yevgenia Danilenko, Julia Wiedwald
Music: DakhaBrakha, Ganna Gryniva
Sound: Vitalyi Garkavyi, Andriy Niedzelsky
SCREENINGS
IDFA (Luminous), The Netherlands 2022
Fipadoc (Visions of Ukraine), France 2023
Docpoint Tallinn, Estonia 2023
Docpoint Helsinki (International Selection), Finnland 2023
Göteborg Film Festival (Inescapable Images from Ukraine), Sweden 2023
Vera Film Festival, Sweden 2023
HUMAN International Documentary Film Festival (int. competition), Norway 2023
IDFF Artdoc Fest, Latvia 2023
Thessaloniki, Greece 2023
Human Rights Film Festival London, UK 2023
CPH:DOX, Denmark 2023
ZagrebDox, Croatia 2023
Visions du Réel, Switzerland 2023
Grimme-Award, Germany 2023
Hot Docs, Canada 2023
BIOGRAPHIES
Mila Teshaieva
Mila Teshaieva is a Ukrainian artist, photographer, and filmmaker. Her work is focused on the topics of national memories and collective identities on the territories of the former Eastern block. The retrospective of her work “Imagined Communities” was shown at the MIT Museum in Boston in 2018. From the very first days of the full-scale invasion of Russia to Ukraine Mila Teshaieva has been in Kyiv and the Kyiv region, photographing, filming, and writing on what she describes as “a defining moment of European history”.
Marcus Lenz
Marcus Lenz is a German director, screenwriter and cinematographer based in Berlin. He graduated from the Deutsche Filmund Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB). His feature film Rival (2020) premiered at Busan IFF and won the Best Director award at Tokyo IFF, Best Global Film at Pristina IFF, among many other awards, also being shown worldwide at more than 50 festivals. In 2016 he founded a production company Wildfilms, and directed multiple mid length documentaries for German television channels WDR and Arte.
