The Earth Is Blue as an Orange (2020)

The Earth Is Blue as an Orange (2020) / Country: Ukraine / Director: Iryna Tsilyk / Duration: 74 min / Language: Ukranian, Russian / Subtitles: Albanian, English / Entrance: FREE

Kino ARMATA and DokuFest begin special screenings of Ukrainian movies with the proceeds from donations going toward support of Ukrainian filmmakers and film practitioners that are directly in danger due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Our hearts are with our wonderful filmmaker friends/colleagues in Ukraine who are under siege in the face of Putin's war against their nation.

We start the series with the multi-awarded documentary “The Earth Is Blue as an Orange” (2020), an exquisitely shot and bold film in its metastorytelling approach, in which director Iryna Tsilyk’s follows single mother Anna and her four children as they document their lives under siege in Ukraine.

SYNOPSIS
Eldest daughter Mira dreams of becoming a cinematographer. As bombs descend on neighboring homes, the family construct, act in, and edit stylized scenes of dangerous predicaments they’ve lived to tell. Mira’s re-creations ratchet up the drama, using local soldiers, tanks, and even her own grandmother to tell terrifying tales of survival. Meanwhile, Iryna quietly captures their more quotidian moments during their shoots and in between takes—scenes that include Mira’s siblings squabbling over line readings, cozy dinners by the fire, and Anna’s compassionate gaze as she watches Mira apply to film school.

Eventually, the two projects fuse into a single vision that gorgeously encapsulates the extremes of war, both its explosive trauma and its mundane peripheral existence in everyday life. With miraculous insight, The Earth Is Blue as an Orange observes a family—and a filmmaker—cope with war using their cameras, working in tandem to create meaning out of a meaningless conflict.

ABOUT IRYNA TSILYK
Iryna Tsilyk (born in 1982 in Kyiv) is a Ukrainian filmmaker and writer and is the author and director of several short fiction and documentary films. The Earth Is Blue as an Orange is her debut feature-length documentary. Moreover, Tsilyk is the author of eight books published in Ukraine (which include poetry, prose, and children’s books).