The Earth Is Blue as an Orange - English subtitled
Intimate portrait of a Ukrainian family that makes a film about their surreal life in a warzone.
On the street where Anna and her four children live, in the eastern Ukrainian city of Krasnohorivka, the war between the separatists and the army sometimes gets frighteningly close. And yet normal life goes on. While outside bombs are falling, director Tsylik focuses her camera on the warm family. Music and film make life bearable for them. So when eldest daughter Myroslava is accepted into a university film program, it’s immediately clear that her first film should be a family production, with her taking on the role of director of photography and her mother taking on the director’s role. Together, they form the cast of a short film inspired by life during wartime.
Although THE EARTH IS BLUE AS AN ORANGE painfully exposes the war that is now raging through the whole of Ukraine, the documentary is also a hopeful portrait of a family that transforms war into art. Iryna Tsilyk, who received the award for best directing at Sundance 2020, thereby documents not only the life of this unforgettable family, but also the possibility of art as a survival strategy.