Original title: В усьому винен Содерберг
A short film about the twenty-four hours you would have to reconstruct from witnesses. Podil, Kyiv, June 2017.
Solia, a nineteen-year-old film student, wakes up in a Kyiv police station with no memory of the day before. To piece together the most chaotic twenty-four hours of her life - in which she dropped out of university, stole a police cat and came close to storming the US Embassy, all in the unstoppable pursuit of becoming the next Soderbergh - she has to ask everyone who was there. The bad news: it wasn’t a creative breakthrough. The worse news: it can happen again.
This is a story that could only have happened here. Podil, where the bohemians and the Soviet stairwells face each other across the road, where the bar and the police station share a street, where you can drop out of university, get into a fight outside an embassy and steal a police cat in one day and the city won’t even turn its head. Podil isn’t surprised. It has seen worse.
19
Film student, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Thinks faster than she speaks and speaks faster than she understands what she has said. Not a quirky girl and not a victim - a serious person following an internal logic that is completely consistent and completely wrong.
8
Neutered. Technically on a diet, though nobody has informed Anton. Official police cat of Kyiv District Police Department No. 2, witness to a bar fight, and accomplice in the most humane crime of the night.
The camera never retreats. It stays close, in the space where a person can no longer escape herself.
Yesterday’s Solia and today’s Solia are two different cuts of the same person, waking up inside the consequences of her own state and struggling to recognise herself.
Reference points: Juste la fin du monde, Beautiful Boy, The Hours, Lady Bird.
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Writer & Director
Ukrainian filmmaker and creative producer. At twenty-one she created, co-wrote, produced and hosted Fantastic Ukrainians, a documentary series on contemporary Ukrainian culture that raised over £250,000, aired on sixteen television channels and two VOD platforms, and was covered by Vogue and Elle. A Chevening Scholar with an MA in Producing Film & Television from Royal Holloway, University of London. This is her debut fiction short as writer-director.
Producer
Founder of EVOS FILM. Producer of How Is Katia? (Locarno) and My Magical World, an Azerbaijan–Ukraine co-production. Works across international co-production and the promotion of Ukrainian cinema in Europe.
Director of Photography
Over twenty-five years in film and television across features, documentaries, series and international productions. Winner of the Teletriumph award for Cinematographer of the Year.
Solia (dream cast)
Dream cast - not attached. Casting in progress.
Ukrainian actress based in the UK. Appeared in Harris Dickinson’s Urchin, Laura Carreira’s On Falling and Toni Noyabrova’s Do You Love Me?, and in Netflix’s Ferry and Ferry: The Series.
National production support secured in Ukraine. Shooting in Kyiv in June 2027.
[PLACEHOLDER: Olha to confirm the status of the Ukrainian national production support]
We are looking for a European minority co-producer to join the film for post-production, international delivery and festival strategy - a partner who brings craft and a network, not only financing.
Olha Matat, Producer
omatat@evos.kiev.ua