Cherry Blossom

Nastya (12) and Viktor (38) escaped from the territories occupied by russia.His family was killed by russian soldiers, and Nastya's mother disappeared. They pretend to be a family and get social housing in a city near Kyiv. Nastya starts going to summer school, where due to uncontrolled aggression, the girl meets Maya (35) a Bosnian psychologist from UNICEF, who sees herself in Nastya. As a teenager Nastya is burdened by the consequences of the war, she refuses to eat, brings a gun to school with her, and falls in love with Viktor, who sees her as his lost daughter. Victor cannot cope with his pain and with Nastya Maya trying to help him rubs her own forgotten wounds
The cherry blossom tells about people in a post-traumatic state.Heroes who managed to survive during the Russian-Ukrainian war encounter a heroine from Bosnia,who survived the Balkan wars as a child. Against the background of fresh wounds,the old wounds of war begin to bleed anew, showing that war stays with people forever

Director’s statement:
This is a story about people who lost their world because of the war and are trying to build a new one. But this process of recovery and finding new normality is very difficult. And we see children that build barricades, and look for abandoned weapons in the forest. I want to use a live camera with the effect of presence to convey the internal experiences of the characters, how they react, and how they experience the fear of intimacy. There are also poetic elements in the story, the heroine remembers cherry blossoms in an industrial town, which are covered by artillery explosions, and white flowers dyed the colour of blood. Cherry blossoms are for me an image of a peaceful life that the heroes lost. That is why in the end, the heroine and her class plant small cherries that will someday grow and bloom again. I want to use as much natural light as possible when shooting. I would also like to use real Ukrainian exterior locations to capture and convey the spirit of the times.