The second last day of the third edition of Ukraine’s first and only LGBTQ+ film Festival, Sunny rabbit In Kyiv will remember for a high, sleepless night.
And it was not because of the parties – it was due to one massive Russian missile and drone attacks, one of the largest since the invasion began. The next morning I met the film festival director Bohdan Zhuk and the PR director Tasia Pugach on the bench in front of the Zhovten cinema.
“At some point, I felt an blast wave,” Zhuk said as he rolled a cigarette, because Pugach talked about how she spent the night with a cat in an underground parking. Anyway, they have planned the work for the day, which constantly includes adaptation to new realities. While Sunny rabbit Festival is a war child born in 2023, this year’s edition met other obstacles.
A major blow came from the cancellation of the USAID funding, which the festival had relied on in previous editions.
“It was a significant amount of money, but our lives were not due to it. I realized that we could definitely collect, find other partnerships and solutions. For who can do it if not us? There must be some kind of extraordinary situation for us to cancel the festival,” Zhuk said.
The festival’s third edition cost about € 60,000, which they joined from residues. “In general, we have never been able to raise a proper budget from one or more donors; it is rather a small support from many different national and international sources,” he added.
Like the previous year, the Ukrainian State Film Agency provided some funding, as well as major international partners such as the Goethe Institute and the International Renaissance Foundation, among others.
Nevertheless, Zhuk shared that “Today there is a remarkable reduction in funding for Ukrainian cultural projects. Some of them completely closed them.”
But what has helped significantly is collaboration with embassies, of which the festival has as many as 10, from Canada to Argentina. The UK, for example, provided a very popular retrospective by British Queer cinema. Given all challenges, the compiled program is really impressive with 60 films that include a mix of Ultra-Fresh Sundance/Berlinale titles such as “Peter Hujar’s day“Or”Lesbian space princesses,“With hits from last year like” I’m not all I want to be “or”Viet and Nam. ”
But really dark times were just forward. When the last layout of the festival was going on, the tragedy beat: Zhuks brother d subject At the front, the country defends. At about the same time, his unfavorable programmers, Viktor Hlon, were mobilized. “We managed to get through it through tremendous mutual support in our team,” Zhuk said.
Air Raid Alerts remains a daily challenge for the festival. As soon as they start pausing the film and the audience is obliged to go to the bomb protection. When the threat is over, the movie is put back. But if the warning lasts more than 30 minutes, the screening is shot. This year, Pugach and Zhuk were just forced to postpone four views.
Despite the already brutal external threats, the festival also suffered from internal and came from its own citizens. Sunny Bunny is well acquainted with homophobic attacks, such as 2014, when the event was still just a sidebar by Kyiv International Film Festival Molodist in Ukraine: During the show of the movie “Summer Nights”, the main hall was set at the cinema. Now at Sunny Bunny patrols dozens of police officers. This year’s festival held them busy, for example on April 19, when the members of Prava Molod (“right youth” in Ukrainian) gathered to express their dissatisfaction and defend “traditional values.” The police arrested about 60 people.
Although the team is used to threats, this year, the situation was inflamed by the fact that the centerpiece of the festival fell on the Orthodox Easter, April 20. Users of social media debated if it is appropriate to hold a queer movie festival on such a holiday, but “For some reason no one has attacked many other entertainment events this day. It’s just a comfortable apology for homophobes,” Pugach said.
The paradox is that these manifestations, on the contrary, take Ukraine closer to its common enemy, which in Russia, homophobia is flourishing with incredible force right now. “This self -remedy is a fertile basis for sociological research,” united Zhuk.
Still, the negative PR festival attracted even more attention. “We received many support words, and some who defended us wrote that this scandal reminded them that Sunny Bunny has started, and it is time to book tickets,” Pugach added with a smile.
In addition to fighting homophobia, the festival also wants to bring diversity to the Queer discourse through its programming and move away from established clichés. For example, Zhuk is personally concerned that the leading themes for Queer Bio are still cisgender white gay men, a dominance he wanted to move away from his festival. He is proud that they have a movie about intersex -people, the documentary “who am I”, which he called “a great rarity in modern film.”
For the second time, Sunny Bunny Festival hosted a short film competition, which offered a monetary price and aimed to stimulate more home -grown Ukrainian films. Zhuk quoted the case with a young Ukrainian director, Vadim Mochalov: “All three years, he has actively been voluntary at the festival. Last year he participated in Pitching and received a special mention, and this year his movie ‘The Story’ is already in the international competition.”
Vibe of the established feeling of society is evident in place as young Cinephile’s binge-watch movies. With some of them in the smoking corner for an enthusiastic discussion about the movie “Queens of Joy”, I felt this flow of excitement, which today is rarely found on Ukraine’s streets. For them, Sunny Bunny is a way to distract from the war and get, if not a physical safe space, at least one mental.
“It’s exhausting, to put it mildly,” Zhuk said. “But I see impact – satisfied people, shaped community or even when someone tells me that the festival changed their life – it is extremely motivating and keeps us moving, no matter what.”
Still, the final night of the festival could not be festive. The Russian attack overnight on Kyiv killed 12 people and injured 87, with April 25, explained a day of grief. The planned Sunny Bunny Techno Party was canceled and the shortened awards ceremony began with a minute of silence. Sundance premiere“Cactus pear,“Ended by winning the top prize in The main competition (the entire list of winners can be seen here). Zhuk called the entire team to the stage and thanked the audience for their presence, Ukraine’s armed forces for his defense and invited everyone to the fourth edition next year.
