Three Ukrainian directors and screenwriters have been selected for residencies at Göteborg Film Festival. The three selected participants will spend August-September in Gothenburg, working in different ways with their projects at the offices of Göteborg Film Festival and getting introduced to the local film industry. The residency program is a cooperation with HDK-Valand, at the University of Gothenburg, and financed by Region Västra Götaland.
"Last summer’s residencies worked out really well and resulted in, among other things, finding a local co-producer for a film premiering in Berlin, new scripts being pitched in Cannes in May – and lifelong friendships. We are now looking forward to welcoming three new interesting and fascinating filmmakers in Gothenburg," says Camilla Larsson, fund manager, at Göteborg Film Festival.
Already in June an additional residency filmmaker arrived in Gothenburg, hosted by Göteborg Film Festival, in cooperation with Swedish Artist Residency Network and Artists at Risk, and with financing from Region Västra Götaland.
Elena Rubashevska, was selected for development support for her project Symphony in Donbas from Göteborg Film Fund already in 2021, and was location scouting in Donbas when the full scale invasion came. She will now spend three months in Gothenburg working on developing film projects and organizing the OKO International Ethnographic Film Festival that normally takes place in Ukrainian Bessarabia, but this year will relocate to Sofia, Bulgaria.
Andrii Lidahovskyi was educated in directing at the Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. She has acted in the awarded short film It was raining in Manchester and in the feature My Thoughts are Silent, by Antonio Lukich, which was awarded at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival. Had the position as Art Director for the feature Luxemburg Luxemburg, by Antonio Lukich, which has been screened and awarded at festivals all over the world. Since 2016 he has been working as an art director for the international creative agency D2D. After having directed numerous music videos and commercials Andrii Lidahovskyi will now develop his first own feature length script and project, about identity and finding oneself.
Svitlana Lishchynska was educated at the Priazovskyi State Technical University, Vitaly Mansky's and Alexander Mitta's courses and Terrarium Script Intensive. She has been working for more than 25 years for the leading Ukrainian TV channels and is now devoted to making documentaries in order to speak on serious social topics and express the author’s position. Her project A Bit of a Stranger, a film about the complexity of family relationships and how the political system affects them, was selected for development support from Göteborg Film Fund during 2022. Lishchynska will now work on the editing of the film in Gothenburg.