In Oksana Karpovych’s debut feature Don’t Worry, the Doors Will Open, we see Ukrainians in the moment of transit, waiting, pause. Suburban trains are the bridge between the past that is gone and the future that hasn’t come yet. Filmmaker and film critic Yuriy Hrytsyna will talk with Oksana Karpovych about the ways of filming poverty and ‘ordinary people’ that avoid ‘entomologisation’ and colonial optics. What is it like to be a Ukrainian filmmaker abroad and what is special about making a film in Ukraine in such a status? Does one need to become a stranger in order to see the mechanics and dynamics of the native? Don’t Worry, the Doors Will Open captures reality invisible for the majority, reality that will soon be gone. In the time of crisis, it gives the film additional dimensions. So the main topic for discussion is what will happen to elektrychkas, Ukraine and all of us in the future. This is the best moment to reflect on why cinema exists and in what form it can continue its existence.

Oksana Karpovych is a filmmaker born in Kyiv, living and working in Montreal since 2013. In her personal projects, Oksana explores how state politics invades the personal sphere and the influence it has on the communities she intimately documents. Oksana is a Cultural Studies graduate from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University in Ukraine and a graduate in Film Production from Concordia University in Montreal. For three years she worked as a programming coordinator at the Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival (Kyiv). Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open is her first feature work.

Yuriy Hrytsyna is a filmmaker, film critic, photographer and visual anthropologist. He focuses on temporary archives, video amateurship, anthropology of the Internet, memory and nostalgia as mobilizing and demobilizing projects. His filmography includes Language and the World (2011), Varta1, Lviv, Ukraine (2016) and Far from Lviv (2020).