Academy Award-winning Latvian producer Matiss Kaza, who co-wrote and produced Gints Zilbalodis’ best animated feature winner “Flow,” has boarded Ukrainian director Philip Sotnychenko’s sophomore film “Times New Roman,” which will take part in the Transilvania Pitch Stop co-production forum this week at the Transilvania Film Festival.
Kaza’s Trickster Pictures joins the pan-European co-production, which is lead produced by Ukraine’s Halyna Kryvorchuk of Viatel and Valeria Sochyvets and Sashko Chubko for Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema. Other co-production partners include Klementina Remeikaite and Laurynas Bareisa for afterschool (Lithuania), Hans Broich for Superzoom Film (Germany) and Ineke Smits for GoGoFilm (Netherlands).
Set in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “Times New Roman” follows the Kyiv-based artist Roman, a man in the throes of a midlife crisis who battles an alcohol addiction while wrestling with the emotional strain of the war. An unlikely way out arrives when Roman is offered an ambitious performance art project: a trio of reenactments of historical assassinations of Ukrainian political figures exiled in Europe, an artistic statement intended to remind the world of the long and brutal history of Russian meddling in Ukrainian affairs. Lured by a chance to flee Ukraine, Roman sets out on a trip across Europe, where he’ll soon discover that it’s not so easy to leave his demons behind.
In a director’s statement provided exclusively to Variety, Sotnychenko said his latest film “reflects my own experience of trying to remain an artist during war in a country with closed borders but open hearts.” He described it as “a narrative feature project that blends a personal story, an artistic gesture and political research.”
“‘Times New Roman’ is a reflection on contemporary Ukraine, seen through the eyes of an artist in inner conflict — torn between staying or leaving, being useful or being honest, feeling or acting,” said the director. “These are questions faced by many Ukrainians today, and I want to explore them through the language of cinema.”
The film is based on the political assassinations of three key Ukrainian independence movement leaders, who were killed by Soviet agents while in exile in Europe: Symon Petlura, who was shot dead in Paris in 1926; Yevhen Konovalets, killed with a bomb in 1938 in Rotterdam; and Stepan Bandera, who was poisoned in Munich in 1959. In the film, Roman embarks on a road trip to the three fateful sites to stage reenactments of the killings in front of the unsuspecting public. “Times New Roman” will be made in collaboration with the performers and visual artists Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei, who will also star.
As Sotnychenko explains, “The project explores how the personal experience of a modern Ukrainian intertwines with historical events, and how war, even when not directly shown, shapes intellectual, emotional and artistic life. This is a fragment of Roman’s life — a man navigating new times and trying to find his place between duty and freedom, home and escape, the personal and the political.”
Sotnychenko’s feature debut, “La Palisiada,” was an enigmatic police procedural that centered on a pivotal moment in the recent history of Ukraine. Describing it as a “disquieting provocation,” Variety’s Manuel Betancourt noted: “There’s an elliptical, almost dream-like logic to how Sotnychenko crafts the film, which is disorienting to the point where you start to wonder if there is anything solid in what we’re observing. All is nebulous and oblique, but within that haze is a powerful story about how history is written and the generational reverberations that such history cannot avoid.” The film, which premiered at Rotterdam, was Ukraine’s entry in the best international film Oscar race in 2023.
Following the success of that film, which was entirely shot before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2024, “Times New Roman” is being made in much more challenging circumstances. “Even though my debut film ‘La Palisiada’ was widely successful, the war in Ukraine makes it extremely difficult to develop films that follow such unorthodox artistic processes and raise difficult social and political themes,” said Sotnychenko.
“There are physical challenges, mental challenges and financial challenges,” said producer Sashko Chubko, who is part of the Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema collective. “It all creates this building mental stress and mental load on you. Most of us are quite exhausted right now, after four years of war. It’s very difficult to work, but somehow, we still manage.”
The production of “Times New Roman,” however, has been bolstered by the news that the Ukrainian State Film Agency is expected later this year to announce the results of its first funding call since the full-scale Russian invasion, which prompted the government to redirect cultural funding toward the war effort. That will give local producers a much-needed boost for international co-productions, with Chubko noting, “Finally we can bring something to the table from the Ukrainian side.”
The Transilvania Intl. Film Festival runs June 12 – 21.
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