...in the competition for the Oscar Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
In total, eight movies had been submitted for the vote: the documentary War of Chimeras, directed by Anastasia Starozhytska and Maria Starozhytska, the comedy Dzidzio Contrabass by Oleh Barshchevsky, the feature-length animated picture Mykyta Kozhumiaka by Manuk Depoyan, the experimental production Black Level by Valentyn Vasianovych, the psychological drama Falling by Maryna Stepanska and history-themed movies Alive by Taras Khymych, The Red by Zaza Buadze and Prayer of Strangers by Akhtem Seitablayev.
The final count showed Black Level winning the majority of votes. The film was screened on the same day in the Zhovten movie theater.
Member of the Ukrainian Oscars Committee and film critic Oleksandr Husiev commented on the results of the vote at the request of our newspaper:
“I am happy with the result, because out of all the candidates, Black Level seems to me to be the perfect choice. This, of course, does not mean that this is a winning choice for the international competition for the Academy Award, but in any case, choosing from what we had, we did it right, in my opinion. Let us be honest about this: in the absence of submissions having any chance to win in that category, it was important for us to send a signal to our cinematographers in the first place. It seems to me that Black Level is solid from the point of view of the correspondence between the creative idea and its realization, it is free of many shortcomings of the Ukrainian cinema. Also, its promising future in terms of production is important: it is a film entirely independent of large companies, of government funding, of any ideology. While it faithfully reflects certain social and everyday attributes of our time, it seems to me to be telling an eternal, universal story, which can be understood by many people.”
