At the East Doc Platform in March 2022, we talked to Ukrainian director Oksana Syhareva and producer Nataliia Pogudina about their awarded documentary project Up in the Air which follows youg Ukrainian aerial artists from Kharkiv before and after the Russian invasion.
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Up in the Air
9-year-old Sasha studies at the circus studio in Kharkiv, Ukraine. He devotes all his spare after-school time to practicing aerial exercises. His teacher and head of the studio Svetlana (50) sees him as a talented and promising artist. There are 100 kids studying in a circus studio. Svetlana’s son Zhenia (24) is an aerial gymnast too, a studio graduate, and he helps her with teaching kids. However, he has a different teaching approach and an ambition to develop his own modern circus. After the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022, Svetlana and 26 circus children evacuate to Budapest. The Princess of Monaco invites them to perform in Monte Carlo in a show which is organized to support Ukraine. Zhenia stays in Kharkiv to defend their country.
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