Ukrainians who have won an Oscar in the 96-year history of the award

In the 96-year history of the Academy Awards, there would have been nine Ukrainians who won them, if not for Kvitka Cisyk's personal conflict with the director of the film You Light Up My Life, Joseph Brooks. The song sung by Kvitka won the Oscar in 1978, but the prize was awarded to another singer, and Cisyk was even cut out of the credits.

So formally, there are eight Ukrainian Oscar winners, along with the authors of the piercing documentary 20 Days in Mariupol. Half of them are my fellow countrymen from Kharkiv: Varvara Karinska, Evheniy Mamut, Mstyslav Chernov, and Vasylisa Stepanenko.

Each of the eight deserves a brief reminder of their contribution to the great art of cinema.

Varvara Karinska, fashion designer. She was born and lived in Kharkiv for 40 years. In the 1920s she moved to Paris, where she worked on ballet costumes with Salvador Dali and Marc Chagall. Later she moved to the United States and quickly conquered Hollywood. Marlene Dietrich, Vivien Leigh, Ingrid Bergman, and other great actresses and actors wore Karinska's outfits. She received an Academy Award in 1949 for her costumes for the movie Joan of Arc.

Yevhen Mamut. A graduate of the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute. Emigrated to the United States in the early 1980s. He was awarded a special technical Oscar in 1987 for the development of special effects for the movie "Predator" with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Jack Palance. He received an Oscar in 1992 for his supporting comedy role in the movie City Dudes, although he is best known as a western actor. The fact that he is a Ukrainian and his real name is Volodymyr Palahniuk was revealed right at the time of receiving the Oscar statuette.

Anatoliy Kokush. In 2006, he was awarded two technical Oscars at once - for the development of the U-Crane gyro-stabilized crane and for the Kaskad series of cranes. These names do not say much to the viewer. But the titles of movies will tell you a lot: for example, the flight of Leonard DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the bow of the Titanic was filmed with a Kokush crane.

Olena Andreycheva. Born in Kyiv, in 1995 she left to study and work in London. In 2020, she won an Oscar for her short documentary Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You're a Girl), filmed in Afghanistan.

And, of course, Mstyslav Chernov, Vasylisa Stepanenko and Yevhen Maloletka. Mstyslav Chernov and Vasylisa Stepanenko are natives of Kharkiv, while Yevhen Maloletka is from the temporarily occupied Berdiansk.