UK premiere
Wheelchair accessible, English subtitles, Pay-what-you-can tickets (£0-£8)
In the small town of Uzhhorod in western Ukraine, which became a place of refuge for many escaping the Russian invasion, a theatre director is working on an adaptation of King Lear. In this documentary, the Shakespeare play is reflected through the lens of non-professional actors living in displacement, which turns it into an observational and analytical tool that helps to look for love and hope against the background of war. At the intersection of personal struggles and inner relationships of the crew, subtleties of linguistic and contextual translations, evergreen truths and new meanings, a new text is born. King Lear: How We Looked for Love During the War invites us to watch this intricate process from an intimately close yet still delicately maintained distance.
Content notes: grief, trauma, consequences of war.
Curated by Natalia Guzevataia
Director’s statement
I witnessed the start of the war in Ukraine's capital - the city of Kyiv, where I had lived for the previous two years. After being jolted awake by explosions, my girlfriend, friends and I left the capital by car for Transcarpathia, my home region, amid the roar of fighter jets and rocket blasts. I became a displaced person, like 11 million other Ukrainians compelled to relocate to safer areas of the country or go abroad.
Subsequently, I began filming the volunteer movement and collecting stories about the lives of displaced people settling in various corners of Uzhhorod - schools, kindergartens, gyms. There, theater director Vyacheslav Egorov, whom I've known for many years, producer Andrii Suyarko, and I conceived the idea of creating a play where the actors would be the displaced people themselves.
The 11 actors were selected through auditions, which revealed their lives and personalities. Who are they, what do they desire, what unites them, and how will the theater project impact them? Will they be able to master their roles? By studying the characters in the film, I learned a lot about myself and the fragility of life and the world we inhabit.
Together with the protagonists, we tread the path from inception to the realization of the play, where everyone attempts something for the first time - making a play for the first time, acting for the first time, and finding, for the first time, what provides us with the strength to move forward. And perhaps amid war, turmoil and an uncertain future, we will find love.
Trailer
