Ukrainian film nominated for European Film Awards 2024: what is it about

The European Film Academy announced the nominees for the European Film Awards 2024 on Tuesday, November 5. The film In Limbo by Ukrainian director Alina Maksymenko will compete for the European Documentary category.

The film will compete with 14 other competitors for recognition in the nomination. The list of films is published on the website of the European Film Academy. The winners will be announced on December 7 in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The full list of nominees in the European Documentary category:

• "Bye Bye Tiberias", Lina Saualem.
• "Dahomey" by Mati Diop.
• "Emilia Perez" by Jacques Audiard.
• "Flow", Gints Zilbalodis.
• "In Limbo," Alina Maksymenko.
• "Living Large", Kristina Dufkova.
• "No Other Land," Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal.
• "Savages," by Claude Barras.
• "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat," by Johan Grimonprez.
• "Sultana's Dream," by Isabel Herguera.
• "The Room Next Door," by Pedro Almodovar.
• "Seeds of the Sacred Fig," by Mohammad Rasoulof.
• "The Substance," by Coralie Fargeat.
• "They Shot the Piano Player," Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal.
• "Vermiglio," by Maura Delpero.

What is In Limbo by Alina Maksymenko about?

The director shot the film in Poland. The plot revolves around a Ukrainian woman, Alina, who is under occupation in Irpin during the Russian invasion. She miraculously managed to leave for a neighboring village, where her parents are stuck.

"In the first weeks, they try to live a normal life: my mom teaches online classes, my father takes care of his cats and animals in the neighborhood, and Alina records current events on camera. But the frontline is getting closer and closer, and they have to make a decision: should they stay or flee? When the neighbors leave their homes, Alina and her parents rush to pack under the cover of night. But at the last minute, her father decides to stay," reads the description of the film.

The director also admitted that the main idea behind In Limbo was to depict her own story of the first days of the full-scale Russian invasion. Alina Maksymenko documented the war on video, which became the basis of the film.

"The axis of the film is my film notes from the first days of the war in Ukraine, documented in the form of a kind of diary in which I tried to record my own thoughts and emotions. To understand what is really happening, what this war is, which I and the people around me have known so far only from books, movies, and stories, and which suddenly became our terrible reality," she explained.

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