La Palisada and Under the Volcano: Five Ukrainian films included in Oscar 2025 lists

The American Film Academy has released the official qualifying lists of films eligible for consideration for the 97th Academy Awards. They include five Ukrainian films. Source: The American Film Academy

Details: The lists in the categories of International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, and Documentary Feature Film have now been published. In total, they include 169 films.

Philip Sotnychenko's film La Palisada will represent Ukraine at this year's Oscars and will be presented in the International Feature Film category. La Palisada is Philip Sotnychenko's feature debut.

The film's genre is called post-Soviet noir. The events take place in Ukraine in 1996, a few months before the signing of Protocol 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provided for the abolition of the death penalty. The film tells the story of a forensic psychiatrist who is to take part in the investigation of the murder of a policeman.

Law enforcement officers are in a hurry to close the case before the death penalty is abolished, but the doctor is not sure of the defendant's sanity. And when he sees how forensic experiments are conducted on the suspect, he begins to doubt the transparency of the law enforcement system.

Poland presented the film Under the Volcano in the International Film category. The film tells the story of a Ukrainian family during the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

The film stars Ukrainian actors. The script was written by Polish director Damian Kocur and Marta Konarzewska. The film was directed by Mykyta Kuzmenko, known for his work on the films Pamfir and The Living Fire.

Ukrainian actors Roman Lutskyi, Anastasia Karpenko, Sofia Berezovska and Fedir Puhachov play the main roles.

In addition to the films by Philip Sotnychenko and Damian Kocur, three other Ukrainian and co-produced films were shortlisted in the Feature Documentary category: The Porcelain War by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontiev tells the story of the war in Ukraine through the lives of three Ukrainian artists of porcelain animal art - Slava Leontiev (who is also the director), his wife Ania Stasenko and Andrii Stefanov.

Peaceful People, directed by Oksana Karpovych, who received the UP 100 award, is based on radio intercepts of telephone conversations between Russian soldiers and their families. They sound against the backdrop of images of the destruction brought to Ukraine by the Russians and strike with their casual attitude to the cruelty towards Ukrainians.

After the Rain: Children Stolen by Putin Return Home by Canadian filmmaker Sarah McCarthy is about children who were illegally taken by Russian forces. They were brought back to Ukraine and now the main characters are recovering from their experience. About Oscar 2024

The 97th Academy Awards ceremony will take place on the night of 3 March. As usual, it will take place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The ceremony will be hosted by American comedian Conan O'Brien.

He is the host of the NBC evening show Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

The comedian will replace TV presenter Jimmy Kimmel, who has hosted the ceremony four times: for the first time in 2017, and then Kimmel took to the stage of the world's main film award in 2018, 2023 and 2024.

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