Academy Award nominee Simon Lereng Wilmont returns with Girl Away From Home, about a young Ukrainian gymnast fleeing war – IDFA

EXCLUSIVE: Filmmaker Simon Lereng Wilmont’s sequel to his Oscar-nominated film A house made of splinters will celebrate its world premiere at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.

His short documentary, Girl away from homeThe film, co-directed with Alisa Kovalenko, tells the story of 13-year-old Ukrainian Nastya, a talented gymnast who develops a close bond with her young teammates in Kiev. But just weeks after her team won the national title in rhythmic gymnastics, the Russian invasion of Ukraine shakes her country and puts her family’s lives in danger. She flees with her grandmother to Germany under bombings.

“Now Nastya has to build a new life without her parents and without her friends from gymnastics,” says a synopsis for the film. “She has no idea when she will be able to return to Kiev and see her parents and friends again. And waiting in Germany is difficult for Nastya. But when she joins a German gymnastics team, things slowly start to look up.”

We look at it first Girl away from home in the trailer above.

Wilmont’s previous two feature films – The distant barking of dogs And A house made of splinters – was filmed in Ukraine and focused on children dealing with the realities of a society constantly threatened by Russian aggression. Co-director Alisa Kovalenko is a Ukrainian filmmaker from the Zaporizhia region, which has been largely under Russian control since the February 2022 invasion. Alice in Warland (2015) and We will not disappearwhich started at the Berlinale at the beginning of the year.

Girl away from home is part of the award-winning Children of the Silk Road Non-fiction series produced by Toolbox Film, a Danish production company, and co-produced by ARTE.

“[The series] “was originally the idea of ​​Danish director Jens Pedersen and Toolbox Film, which then developed into a full-length series,” explains Wilmont in an interview included with the film’s press releases. “Girl away from home is part of the third part of the series. The idea behind the series was to weave a tapestry of children’s stories living in lands along the ancient Silk Road. Each film is a carefully crafted and sensitive portrait of a child, between the ages of 11 and 14, grappling with life’s challenges, big and small, as they grow up. And while Ukraine is not generally considered one of the Silk Road countries, it obviously depends on which period you are referring to, as the network of trade routes is widely distributed and extensive.”

Filming in Germany and Ukraine before the invasion, the filmmakers filmed Nastya and her teammates as they completed grueling training sessions and then traveled to the national competition.

“If I could, I would have them all as main characters in the film,” Kovalenko said. “But since the short documentary would last only 22 minutes, a decision had to be made. Coach Natalia and I had many conversations about the girls, their dreams, ambitions and abilities, and she once told me that she loves Nastya. There was something magnetic about her, this light in her, the fragility of heart and sensitivity that you noticed as soon as you met her.

Nastya tells her own story in the film. Of her teammates, she says: “The girls were like my extended family and I felt that we could get through anything together.” After the invasion forced her to leave Ukraine, Nastya said: “I felt my life was turned upside down. .”

Wilmont noted, “The girls trained for long hours and had very little free time, so we just started filming the scenes where we could actually get to know them in a more personal context as the war fully unfolded . And suddenly we couldn’t continue this work anymore. So the decision to use Nastya’s voiceover was somehow born out of necessity, because for example it would be almost impossible to capture a scene explaining what happened to her happening and many young people like her are in the early days of filming. the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.”

Girl away from home will premiere at IDFA on Monday, in contention for the festival’s youth documentary award. Five additional shows will take place between November 14 and 19.

Aulook handles international sales of the film. Watch the trailer above.