30. Film Festival della Lessinia
Bosco Chiesanuova (Italia)
23 August - 1 September 2024

Italian premiere

Stuzhytsya means "cold place" and is the name of a remote Ukrainian village located in the Carpathian Mountains, in the border triangle with Poland and Slovakia. It is a land inhabited mainly by the elderly that has remained unchanged, much as it was many years ago. Hanna is a peasant who works hard on her farm, Maria is the only postal worker in the village and Nelya is a biologist who conducts research in the National Park, clashing with the indifference of the local authorities. Maksym Melnyk, also a native of Zakarpatska Oblast, approaches their stories with affection. Along with him is "The German", as the three women affectionately call Florian Baumgarten, the cameraman who films them. An engaging portrait of women who resist abandonment in a cold rural land that finds warmth only in the value of solidarity.

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  Maksym Melnyk

  Maksym Melnyk is a Ukrainian director, born in Uzhhorod in 1982.

  
  

  He studied directing and cinematography at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia. He continued his education at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Potsdam, Germany, specializing in documentary filmmaking.

  
  

  In 2017 he participated as director of photography in the film The Color of Intelligence. In 2022 he presented his first feature film, Three Women (Drei Frauen), which in the same year won the Audience Award both at the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film and at the Duisburg Film Week.