Five portraits of the Maidan
Documentary
Overview
Stories united by the Revolution of Dignity. Charismatic and honest characters tell about their own Maidan: Lesia Khomenko, Alevtyna Kakhidze, Maks Vehera, Oleksii Furman and Bohdan Kutiepov.
No cast information.
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Ukrainian journalist Katya Soldak, currently living in New York City and working for Forbes magazine, chronicles Ukraine's history: its strong ties to Russia for centuries; how it broke away from the USSR and began to walk alone; the Orange Revolution, the Maidan Revolution, the Crimea annexation, the Donbass War; all through the eyes of her family and friends settled in Kharkiv, a large Ukrainian city located just eighteen miles from the Russian border.
Revolutions on Granite is a documentary about Maidan Nezahlezhonsti, a public square in the heart of Kyiv, Ukraine — famously home to a number of political revolutions, but also the birthplace of a cultural revolution after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The film takes a look at the burgeoning skateboard scene at Maidan in the early 1990’s, and investigates the idea of a counterculture being created in a place of strict uniformity.
In February 2014, paramilitary groups fought against the police in the streets of Kyev and ousted President Yanukovych. They settled a new government. According to western media, they were the revolution heroes. But they are actually heavily armed extreme-right militias. The Right Sector, Azov or Svoboda created parallel irregular forces that easily go out of control. In Odessa, in May 2014, they were responsible for burning 45 people to death without facing any charges. How come western democracies haven’t raised their voice in protest? Most likely because these Ukrainian nationalist militias actually played a significant role in a much larger scale war. The Ukrainian revolution was strongly supported by the US diplomacy. In the new cold war that opposes Russia to the USA, Ukraine is a decisive pawn. A tactical pawn to contain Putin’s ambitions. “Ukraine, masks of the revolution” by Paul Moreira sheds light on this blind corner.
The film collects the memories of five different people about the events on the Maidan. Among them are the stories of the mother of Roman Huryk, who was killed on Maidan, Radio Liberty correspondent Andrii Dubchak, artist Oleksii Sai, human rights activist Sasha Matviichuk, and Andrii Prepodobnyi, a former police officer and now the regional representative of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights in Rivne region. ‘MAIDAN. Six letters of our freedom’ consists of six chapters. Each letter of the word ‘Maidan’ is the title of a chapter, which symbolises a topic related to the events of the Revolution of Dignity, the memories shared by the film's characters.