On July 18, Lviv hosted a pre-premiere screening of the documentary “Iron Butterflies”, filmed by the Babylon’13 team, which crystallizes the Ukrainian perspective on the story of the MH17 disaster. The tape, which won a prize at the Docudays UA festival and participated in Sundance and Berlinale, was personally presented by the creators.
On July 19, the film will also be shown at the Multiplex cinema in the Spartak Shopping Center. From July 20 to 23, inclusive, the film will be screened at “Planet of Cinema” in the Forum shopping center.
In the summer of 2014, the Russian military shot down the civilian plane flight MH17 with 298 people on board in the sky over the Ukrainian Donbass. The Russian government immediately began to deny its involvement in the tragedy, and propaganda – to work at full capacity, trying to hide the true circumstances of the crime. The tape “Iron Butterflies” tells about the circumstances of a war crime, the investigation of which lasted 8 years.
Its authors were present at the pre-premiere screening – director Roman Lyubiy and cinematographer and producer Andriy Kotlyar, who talked about the difficulties involved in creating the film and answered questions from the audience. A meeting with the director and producer allowed the audience to better understand the details that formed the basis of this documentary.
“It’s always nice to show a movie in Lviv, because there is a sincere audience here that asks important, but sometimes rather difficult questions,” Andriy Kotlyar shares his impressions of the meeting.
“This is the third time we have met at the shows people who were in the temporarily occupied territories at the time of the downing of the plane – in Grabovo, Snizhny or Donetsk. And hearing their feedback is especially valuable, because they admit that for them this is a story about the fact that there is a Ukrainian view of the disaster, which was created by Ukrainians about Ukrainians,” says director Roman Lyubiy.
The film team invites Lviv residents to support the Ukrainian documentary film “Iron Butterflies”: come to a screening in the cinema, talk about the film on social networks and invite friends. You can see the schedule of shows on the distributor’s website: https://bit.ly/3pNHiBR
For the first time “Iron Butterflies” saw the light of day at “Sundance” – one of the main independent film festivals in the USA – in the World Cinema Documentary Competition section. The European premiere took place at the Berlinale. The film was shown in The Hague at the Movies That Matter festival, and it was also included in the “Horizons” program of the International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary.
The Ukrainian premiere of the film took place at the Docudays UA festival. The film won the main prize of the Right Now! — an award for creative documentary film that explores and analyzes the modern world and makes a significant contribution to the debate about human dignity, freedom and equality.
The film was created by the Babylon 13 film association in co-production with TRIMAFILM (Germany) and RBB/ARTE (Germany) with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Fund and the State Agency of Ukraine for Cinema. Producers: Andrii Kotlyar, Volodymyr Tykhi, David Lehmer, Isabel Bertolon, Trini Goetze.