My ne zgasnemo

We Will Not Fade Away

Generation 14plus 2023

“I don’t remember a single year in my life as well as 2014.” – “It’s as if a new timeline began at that moment.”

Having grown up among the ruins, minefields, bomb shelters and coal mines of the Donbas, Andriy, Illia, Lera, Liza and Ruslan live in a world where, ever since 2014, shelling and gunfire have been as commonplace as the ever-present yearning for a better life. An expedition to the Himalayas gives the five Ukrainian teenagers the chance to fulfil this dream for a brief moment, before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February of 2022 ends up destroying the last remnants of hope. With its sensitive, unobtrusively perceptive gaze, the film paints a moving portrait of a generation of young people surrounded by darkness, who are nonetheless – or perhaps all the more – able to recognise and celebrate the fragile beauty of life.

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by Alisa Kovalenko Ukraine / France / Poland 2023 Ukrainian, Russian 100’ Colour World premiere | Documentary Form recommendation: 14 years and up

Crew

Director	Alisa Kovalenko
Cinematography	Serhiy Stetsenko
Editing	Maryna Maykovska, Kasia Boniecka
Music	Wojciech Frycz
Sound	Mariia Nesterenko
Producers	Valery Kalmykov, Oleksiy Kobelev
Co-Producers	Katarzyna Kuczyńska, Stéphane Siohan, Tomasz Morawski
Co-Production	HAKA Films Warschau East Roads Films Kyiv, Paris

Produced by

Trueman Production

Berlinale Meets | Interview

Alisa Kovalenko

Born in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine in 1987. She studied documentary filmmaking at the Karpenko-Kary University in Kyiv and at the Wajda School in Warsaw, Poland. Her first feature-length documentary Alisa in Warland premiered at IDFA in 2015; Home Games screened at over 100 festivals and won numerous awards. She is the programmer for the international documentary competition of the Molodist film festival in Kyiv. After the start of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine in February 2022, she broke off her work on My ne zgasnemo and spent four months in a volunteer fighting unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Filmography (documentaries)

2014 Sestra Zo (Sister Zo) 2015 Alisa w krainie wojny (Alisa in Warland) 2018 Home Games 2023 My ne zgasnemo (We Will Not Fade Away) 2024 Frontline

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2023