Unwanted Kinship

Ungewollte Verwandtschaft
Germany
2024
Documentary
30 min.

Director | Pavel Mozhar
Script | Pavel Mozhar, Kolja Volkmar
Director or photography | Jonas Roemmig
Editing | Florian Seufert
Animator | Laura Daerr
Sound designer | Bertold Budig
Main cast | Iryna Poplavska, Oleksandr Kryvosheiev, André Mewis
Producer | Kolja Volkmar
Production company | Mozhar&Volkmar Film GbR

The reports by civilian victims of the Russian and Belarusian occupation in Ukraine contain descriptions of torture and repression that appear to be systematic in nature. Taking those reports as a basis, a filmmaker born in Belarus investigates that systematic procedure on the streets of his Berlin neighborhood. He also confronts the question of what this war of annihilation has to do with him and what responsibility he himself bears.

 

About the director:

Born in Minsk, Belarus in 1987, he grew up in and around Berlin from the age of ten. From 2009 to 2012, he studied philosophy and economics at the University of Bayreuth. In 2015, he took up a film directing degree with a focus on documentary at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. His short documentary Handbook, about the protests in Belarus in August 2020, won numerous awards, including Best Short Film at the IDFA in 2021. Mozhar’s most recent work is a short documentary Unwanted Kinship about the Russian war of extermination in Ukraine.