28th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
My Unknown Soldier
synopsis
Documentarian Anna Kryvenko offers an unusual perspective on the 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia. She conceived My Unknown Soldier as an audio-visual diary, through which she revisits the events of the time with rare archive material and her own commentary. Her great-uncle was a soldier in the occupying forces; he committed suicide shortly after his return from Czechoslovakia. Kryvenko’s own Ukrainian origin earns her first-hand experience of the Czechs’ deep-seated hatred of Russian-speaking people. The film therefore casts light on another unfortunate legacy of the August 1968 events in contemporary Czech, but also Ukrainian and Russian society.
"I don’t want to speak about general justice or truth. I would like to show that no truth can be definite. This is a story about how one becomes an “occupier” without intending to." A. Kryvenko
biography
Ukrainian director Anna Kryvenko (1986) studies at the Center for Audiovisual Studies at Prague’s FAMU film school. She has made short experimental films with source material from film archives and explored their relationship to history. They include Language but No Words (2012, Ji.hlava IDFF 2012), Silently Like a Comet (2014, Ji.hlava IDFF 2014) and Listen to the Horizon (2015, Ji.hlava IDFF 2015).
more about film
director: | Anna Kryvenko |
cast: | Anna Kryvenko |
producer: | Michal Kráčmer, Sergei Serpuhov, Wanda Adamik Hrycova |
script: | Anna Kryvenko |
sound: | Viktor Krivosudský |
skladatel: | Andris Dzenitis, Yair Elazar Glotman, David Střeleček |
art director: | Jurģis Krāsons |