The Earth is Blue as an Orange, the film by Ukrainian director Iryna Tsilyk entered the prestigious program Best of Fests, which is part of the IDFA, the biggest documentary film festival.
The selection of Best of Fests comprises 30 favorites and winners of the Sundance festival, and those held in Cannes, Berlin and other famous venues that hold the world's most popular film festivals. The organizers mark the special interest and meaning of this year's program, as every festival this year takes place under extraordinary circumstances.
IDFA festival will take place in Amsterdam on November 18-29, in the mixed format of offline and online events.
The documentary “follows single mother Anna and her four children as they document their lives under siege in Ukraine. Eldest daughter Mira dreams of becoming a cinematographer. As bombs descend on neighboring homes, the family construct, act in, and edit stylized scenes of dangerous predicaments they’ve lived to tell. Mira’s re-creations ratchet up the drama, using local soldiers, tanks, and even her own grandmother to tell terrifying tales of survival. Meanwhile, Iryna quietly captures their more quotidian moments during their shoots and in between takes… Eventually, the two projects fuse into a single vision that gorgeously encapsulates the extremes of war, both its explosive trauma and its mundane peripheral existence in everyday life”.
With miraculous insight, The Earth Is Blue as an Orange observes a family—and a filmmaker—cope with a war using their cameras, working in tandem to create meaning out of meaningless conflict.