Ukrainian director Oleh Sentsov has begun pre-production on Kai, his first fiction characteristic in 5 years since 2021 drama Rhino.
Filming on Kai is scheduled to happen in Ukraine within the first half of 2027, with the undertaking bringing collectively producers from Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France and the Czech Republic.
Former political prisoner Sentsov has been serving within the Ukrainian armed forces since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, initially participating within the defence of Kyiv and later preventing within the Donbas.
Throughout Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, during which he served as a junior lieutenant, he recorded the footage that grew to become his documentary Actual (2024).
Filming on Kai is scheduled to happen in Ukraine within the first half of 2027, with the undertaking bringing collectively producers from Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France and the Czech Republic.
The drama will likely be set towards the interval operating from Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity (2013–2014), also called the Maidan Revolution, and the early years of the Russian-Ukrainian Warfare when Russia occupied Crimea.
On the coronary heart of drama is a household confronting an inner disaster as their nation undergoes elementary change, for an intimate story revisiting a turning level in European historical past the implications of which proceed to form lives throughout the continent.
“My screenplay attracts alone experiences, together with elevating a son with autism, participating within the Maidan protests and evacuating civilians from fight zones,” says Sentsov. “It isn’t strictly autobiographical, however it’s deeply private. At its coronary heart are household relationships and the alternatives individuals make when private upheaval coincides with historic change.”
Ukrainian writer-director Maryna Stepanska has joined the undertaking as co-writer. She wrote and directed Falling (2017), which premiered at Karlovy Fluctuate, and co-wrote Anna Buryachkova’s Without end-Without end (2023), which premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti Further part.
Filming is deliberate in areas of Ukraine comparatively much less affected by air raid alerts and assaults. The Ukrainian crew will embody veterans and serving army personnel, with the manufacturing providing a route again into the movie trade for these transitioning to civilian life.
Kai is produced by Denis Ivanov and Oleh Sentsov by way of Ukraine’s Arthouse Visitors and Cry Cinema. Co-producers are Dariusz Jabłoński, Violetta Kamińska and Izabela Wójcik of Apple Movie Manufacturing in Poland; Heino Deckert of ma.ja.de. fiction in Germany; Šárka Cimbalová and Mike Downey of Marlene Movie Manufacturing within the Czech Republic; and François Yon and Paul De Beco of France’s Playtime, which can also be dealing with worldwide gross sales.
The undertaking has secured assist from the European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian Movies (ESFUF), Ukraine’s Ministry of Tradition and the Polish Movie Institute, alongside different funders. Improvement was supported by the Ukrainian Cultural Basis, the Göteborg Movie Fund and FILMBOOST, a joint programme of the German Movie Academy and NGO Docudays. Kai was introduced on the Les Arcs Movie Competition’s Co-Manufacturing Village in 2022.
Sentsov established his worldwide fame with Gamer (2011), which premiered on the Worldwide Movie Competition Rotterdam.
Arrested by Russian occupying authorities in Crimea in 2014, Sentsov spent greater than 5 years in jail earlier than his launch in 2019. Whereas imprisoned in Labytnangi, Russia, he labored remotely on Numbers (2020), an adaptation of his personal play co-directed with Akhtem Seitablaiev, bought internationally by Latido Movies.. The movie had its world premiere on the Berlin Worldwide Movie Competition.
His most up-to-date fiction characteristic, Rhino (2021), premiered in Venice’s Orizzonti competitors and gained the Bronze Horse for Finest Movie on the Stockholm Worldwide Movie Competition.
It screened at greater than 50 worldwide festivals, was taken to market by London-based West Finish Movies and it bought to territories together with america, France, Spain, Italy, the UK, Scandinavia and the Center East.
“Gamer was Oleh’s breakout indie characteristic a couple of younger video gamer in Crimea, which premiered to excessive reward on the Rotterdam Worldwide Movie Competition,” says co-producer and former European Movie Academy Chair Mike Downey, “whereas Rhino was gritty crime drama exploring Nineties Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He adopted that with Actual, hanging documentary capturing precise front-line trench warfare in actual time. Kai brings Oleh’s work as a movie maker a lot nearer to house, drawing very a lot on his private experiences in these embattled traditionally vital instances.”
Alongside filmmaking, Sentsov is now a fight battalion commander within the forty seventh Separate Mechanized Brigade “Magura” of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Since 2022, he has bee concerned in preventing in intense sectors together with Bakhmut, Avdiivka, the southern entrance close to Robotyne, and the Kursk incursion, and wounded a number of instances in fight.
