Ukrainian film "Honeymoon" won applause in Venice: what the drama is about, for which only 8 million hryvnias were allocated

Honeymoon,the Ukrainian debut feature film by Zhanna Ozirna, director and author of the Feminism and the City comic strip, received a standing ovation from the audience after its screening at the Venice Film Festival on September 2. Only 8 million hryvnias were allocated for filming and all organizational work, which is 3 times less "than a standard author's film in Ukraine."

The film was shown in the Biennale College Cinema program, which also financed it. As you can see, despite the limited budget, The Honeymoon still managed to impress foreign audiences. Zhanna Ozirna posted a video with applause after the screening on her Instagram.

The video showed the audience giving the film crew a standing ovation, and the director hugging her friends and thanking them for their support and warm words. Previous publications have revealed that tickets to the screening of the director's debut film were sold out. The hall was completely full.

Zhanna Ozirna, producer Dmytro Sukhanov, and the lead actors Roman Lutsky and Iryna Nirsha took to the red carpet of the Venice Film Festival with the Ukrainian flag. For their demonstration, they chose the famous Italian folk song Bella ciao.

"The total amount of money given for the project is 200 thousand euros, which is three times less than the standard author's film in Ukraine. According to the terms, if you receive the money, you have to finish the film next summer, before the Venice Film Festival. Just imagine: in the summer of 2023, I had almost nothing, and the following March, we were already shooting. And this is a debut for 8 million hryvnias," the director told Suspilne about the financing.

What is the movie "Honeymoon" about?

"The Honeymoon is a psychological drama about a couple who, at the beginning of a full-scale war in 2022, found themselves under occupation in the suburbs of Kyiv. The couple was unable to leave the city, so they were trapped in their own apartment. This intense month forced the lovers to rethink their relationship and put their lives on the shelves.

Zhanna Ozirna also said that the idea for the story came to her almost by accident. She, like many Ukrainians, left the Kyiv region for abroad at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion. Later, the filmmaker read in the news about a family that did not have time to leave Bucha and survived the entire occupation in their apartment on the second floor, but did not focus on it.

"And then in early June, I came home and woke up one morning thinking, 'That story would make a great movie. The same day, I called [producer] Dima Sukhanov and told him about this idea. Then I asked Philip Sotnychenko to become a co-screenwriter, because I was very tired of working on Lower Horizon by myself. In the end, I wrote the script for Honeymoon myself, and Philip read and commented on it. However, his most important contribution to the story was that he suggested cutting the movie down to two people in the frame. After all, at first I started writing the story as it was in the news - about a whole family," Ozirna said.

In particular, she explained that the script was based on the stories of two families from Bucha. "Because there are a lot of videos and photos online from the first days of the full-scale invasion, Western viewers have a well-established idea that there was mostly chaos and panic. Instead, I wanted to recreate a different picture: not an action movie where everyone runs to the basement and panics, but something else," the director added.

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