By Guillermo Azabal |
Los Angeles (USA) (EFE).- The harsh childhood of children whose parents suffer from alcoholism in a region as troubled as Donbas (eastern Ukraine) is reflected in “A House Made of Splinters”, a work by the filmmaker Danish Simon Lereng selected in the shortlist of finalists for best documentary at the Oscars.
When the Lereng film crew (Copenhagen, 1975) traveled to the municipality of Lysychansk between 2019 and 2020, none of them could have imagined that two years later Russia would decide to invade Ukraine and start a war that would affect all corners of the country.
Nor did it cross their minds that the stories of Eva, Sasha, Polina and Kolya -the little ones from the orphanage that make up the plot line of the documentary- would end up captivating the Hollywood Academy and earning the director the first nomination for a golden statuette of his entire trajectory.
“Our idea was to make visible children who were already in the lowest rung of a society totally devastated due to injuries from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine,” Lereng said in an interview with EFE.
And it is that the War in Donbas – an area of eastern Ukraine bordering Russia – began in 2014, worsened after the Russian invasion last year and continues to be a front with such intense armed activity that it has led to a fragmented region on which both countries dispute its control.
Childhood in the middle of the war
Lysychansk is currently under Russian rule, but the creators of “A House Made of Splinters” were able to contact the orphanage and offer them an online counseling program for them to receive therapy after the suffering caused by the conflict and their situation. familiar.
Beyond the protest component and social mission that this documentary has, Lereng explained to EFE that he also pursued the objective of “celebrating childhood”, a stage “full of ingenuity, happiness and values such as friendship”, despite that the boys were going through “such difficult times”.
Most of the children filmed were in a vulnerable situation, in many cases together with their siblings, after the social services withdrew their custody from parents who suffered from alcoholism and could not take care of them.
The film provides the look that any other child would have who was an inmate in the orphanage and observed his companions facing dilemmas so typical of childhood such as a fight over a toy or who gets the best part of the food.
An award-winning work that points to the Oscar
Under a traditional aesthetic, and with a very judicious use of moments of silence and the musical setting, the narrative gives rise to moments of disinhibition in which the children forget that they are in front of a camera and also talk about the problems that surround them. .
“They are so young and at the same time they make such deep reflections that they make you realize how difficult environments make them mature before their time”, explained the filmmaker.
“A House Made of Splinters” was already awarded last year at the prestigious Sundance Festival and will now compete in the category of best documentary at the Oscars along with another work whose theme involves Russia: “Navalny”, which follows in the footsteps of the opponent Alexéi Navalny and his repression by the government of Vladimir Putin.
The award ceremony will take place on March 12 in Los Angeles and the rest of the contenders in that section are made up of “All That Breathes”, a film about pollution in big cities; “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”, about the opioid crisis in the US, and “Fire of Love”, the story of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft.
