The short film Neighbours by director and journalist Yevhen Lesnyy has won at the international documentary film festival NewBorn Short Film Festival.
This was reported on the festival’s Instagram.
Neighbours was honored in the Best Documentary Film category.
The ten-minute film Neighbours tells a story about “living alongside war, memory, responsibility, and the choice that sooner or later everyone has to make.”
The film was made from materials left over after work on the documentary Forgive Me, Mom about a Crimean native, former political prisoner, and Ukrainian serviceman Hennadiy Afanasyev, who was killed at the front in 2022.
“While working on the film Forgive Me, Mom, I paid attention to what was happening in the military section of the cemetery. It’s the kind of story where neighbours become both those who have died and those who come to visit the dead. It’s a sketch of today’s realities — interactions between people: how they treat each other to coffee, talk about everyday life, about power outages,” Lesnyy said.
NewBorn Short Film Festival is an international festival of short and independent cinema held annually in Berlin, Germany.
The event screens films from around the world and serves as a platform that introduces new names in cinema. The festival presents awards in several categories, including best documentary, fiction, experimental, and animated short.
This year’s event took place on 3 July.