The State Film Agency of Ukraine has signed a contract for state support with the producing company of The Secret Diary of Symon Petliura, setting the support amount at 23,599,998 hryvnias.
The film, originating at the Dovzhenko National Feature Film Studio, won the agency’s eighth competitive selection. Oles Yanchuk is the movie’s director and producer. The screenplay is the result of a two-year collective effort by Mykhailo Shaievych, Oleksandr Shevchenko, and Oles Yanchuk, i-pro.kiev.ua reports. The documentary drama covers the Paris exile period in the life of Symon Petliura, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian People’s Republic’s military.
“I spent a long time collecting the materials for it in the Petliura Ukrainian Library in Paris,” the director told us. “I also had good advisers in Ukraine, especially historian Professor Volodymyr Serhiichuk.”
Let us recall that Yanchuk is a renowned filmmaker and has led the Dovzhenko Studio since 2014. He is among the most active Ukrainian directors currently, making history-themed movies with a distinct national-patriotic emphasis: almost all of his works show figures and highlight topics which were taboo in the Soviet era. His films include Famine-33, Assassination: an Autumn Murder in Munich, The Undefeated, The Iron Company, and Metropolitan Andrey.
