CPH:DOX to Open With Pieter-Jan De Pue’s ‘Mariinka’

Key Highlights

• Related Stories LevelK and Publikum Kick Off Strategic Partnership With Heist Action Comedy ‘The Pension Heist’ (EXCLUSIVE) Renowned Brazilian Telenovela Writer Aguinaldo Silva Bets on Melodrama in Return to Primetime With Hit Globo Teenage Pregnancy Drama ‘Three Graces’ Shot on 16mm and nine years in the making, “Mariinka” is the second feature documentary by De Pue after the highly praised “The Land of the Enlightened” (2016).
• The film will be screened in the festival’s main competition, DOX:AWARD, honoring films that “combine exceptional storytelling, innovative filmmaking, and cultural as well as social relevance.” Popular on Variety “Mariinka” begins long before the world watched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• In eastern Ukraine, the film traces several young Ukrainians whose lives have been forever shaped by more than 10 years of war and conflict in the Donbas region.
• Amidst the war a promising boxing talent turns military paramedic, a girl is smuggling unexpected goods across the frontline to survive, and as in a Greek tragedy, two brothers now fight on opposite sides of the front line – against each other – while their youngest brother lives in safety far from the war with a foster family in the United States.
• “Through letters, video calls and silent meetings, a story unfolds about belonging, national loyalty and the fault lines where political conflicts can trump even the bonds of blood,” the festival said.