PRODUCER
Weapons Cameras
Darya Bassel is an internationally known and successful Ukrainian film producer who also works as the head of industry of Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival (Kyiv). She’s also one of the producers of the Butterfly Dream by Maksym Nakonechny, premiering in Un Certain Regard in Cannes. By Maria Ulfsak Photo by Vadym Ilkov
D
arya, where are you at the moment? Are you and your family safe? (The interview was conducted on April 20th, 2022. -ed.)
Right now, I’m in Ivano-Frankivsk, it’s a beautiful small city in the West of Ukraine. But tomorrow I’m moving back to Kyiv. I am safe and my family too. My parents are in Odesa, they decided not to move. You have been working both as a programmer for Docudays film festival, and as a successful film producer. In what form and how are you working at the moment? And under such enormous stress - how do you mentally cope?
For the last couple of years, I’ve been shifting my activities at Docudays UA from the program department to the industry section. This also corresponds with my increased activity in the field of film production. Together with my colleague Vika Khomenko (producer of the award-winning film Stop-Zemlya), we started Moon Man production company in 2019, and since then life has been a roller coaster. It’s complicated to combine
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ESTONIAN FILM
work at the festival and producing films, but I cannot imagine leaving the festival. I have spent 10 years of my life there, and it’s more than just a job. It’s funny, while the life of many filmmakers in Ukraine drastically changed since the beginning of the war - many joined the army, or became active volunteers, or started working as fixers with international journalists - my life is almost the same, only more work. In addition to taking care of our ongoing productions, and completed films (we just had a release of the first film of our production company at CPH:DOX - Outside directed by Olha Zhurba), together with colleagues from Ukraine and abroad we started an initiative for documentary filmmakers who are actively shooting war and its consequences. It’s called Docu/Help and I invite everyone who wants to support Ukrainian documentary filmmakers to donate. We’ve bought equipment, vests, helmets, medical kits, gas masks. Now we are thinking about starting a call with small grants. We see that after almost 2 months of war a lot of filmmakers just need some support for basics: food, transport, flat rent.
