Presented by Bread Garden Market, Little Village, and FilmScene
DIALOGUE: Filmmaker Maksym Melnyk in person from Europe
Vino Vérité welcomes filmmaker Maksym Melnyk with a portrait of the residents of a small community in his native Ukraine in the search for friendship, stamps, and bats.
The Vino Vérité series features talented new voices and established filmmakers influenced by the vérité tradition in person to present their thought-provoking, chance-taking, and visually-arresting films. Each selection is paired with hand-selected wines from Bread Garden Market.
Tickets: $25 public / $20 members / $12 students. Includes wine tasting & hors d'oeuvres, film, filmmaker Q&A, and dessert reception.
6:30 - Hors d'oeuvres & wine tasting
7:00 - Screening
8:30 - Filmmaker Q&A + Dessert Reception
"A well-crafted piece of verite, deftly edited ... [and] propelled by Melnik’s genuine affection for his subjects and hunger for their conversations." —Filmmaker Magazine
"Melnyk couldn’t have located any more salt of the earth subjects, all incredibly endearing in their own ways. Three Women is as generous in spirit as the people it follows." —The Moveable Feast
"If Stuzhytsia truly is a 'dying village' like Maria claims, Three Women may indeed one day read like a fairy tale. In the meantime, this poor, overlooked town offers its share of small miracles." —Reverse Shot
ABOUT THREE WOMEN
Somewhere in the Carpathians between Ukraine, Slovakia, and Poland lies the village of Stuzhytsia. In Ukrainian the name of the village means something like "cold place." Director Maksym Melnyk and his team brave this cold in search of human warmth, which they find despite generational, language, and social barriers. In rare form, Melnyk offers audiences the chance to watch the film team's relationships develop on screen as his observational documentary becomes a participatory one when the film process begins to impact its participants.
Three Women tells the stories of Hanna, a farmer, Maria, the postwoman and Nelya, a biologist. In the middle of the mountains, they have to cope with social reality and loneliness. In a tiny kitchen, Hanna shares her loneliness with the filmmakers, who remind her of her deceased sons. In the village post office, postwoman Maria has neither stamps nor heating, but customers are warmed with liquor and songs. Somewhere in the woods and caves, biologist Nelya looks for the animal droppings that are a treasure to her. Here in this remote unknown corner of Ukraine, these woman and their neighbors decide daily to make a life in a lonely place.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Maksym Melnyk lives in Berlin, and was born in 1982 in Uzhhorod, Ukraine. After working as a journalist for a regional TV studio, he started studying film direction at Bratislava Academy of performing arts (Slovakia). He continued his studies at Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf where he majored in documentary film direction. In 2022 he graduated with his first feature film Three Women.
DOK Leipzig (2022) — World Premiere, Golden Dove, Audience Award
FILMZ Mainz (2022) — Best Documentary
Duisburg Film Week (2022) — Audience Award Special Mention
True/False Film Festival (2023) — Official Selection
Visions du Réel (2023) — Official Selection