LGBTQ+ DOCUMENTARY, 80 min.

DIRECTOR: Yuriy Dvizhon

SCREENWRITERS: Anastasiia Alieksieieva, Ljosha Chashchyn

PRODUCER: Olesya Lukyanenko

This film is about LGBT Ukrainians who were born and raised during the USSR and remained outlaws for many years. Only now, despite the war, they have decided to pursue their dreams and embrace their true identities.

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TREATMENT

Larysa is in a hurry: she needs to collect the gifts for her beloved one, feed her sons (there are four of them), dress up and make up a little bit, buy flowers and go meet her sweetheart Bako at the train station. It is the first time that Larysa and Bako are meeting in person, but they have known each other for more than a year now, and they have been in love for more than a year.

Larysa's sons Andrii and Emik in a bomb shelter, Lviv, December, 2023

Larysa lives in a shelter for internally displaced persons in Lviv. She and her sons have one room. But it's comfortable here. Larysa's sons, the local kids from the shelter, their breakdance group and their chess section are also waiting for Bako along with Larysa.

We meet Bako at her home – in Kazakhstan, in a small conservative town. She is going to leave this place forever. She comes up with different versions for her neighbors, her colleagues and her acquaintances as to where and why she is leaving. Because to simply say that she is going to her beloved woman in Ukraine means putting herself in danger here.

Bako on her way to Ukraine, Kazakhstan, November, 2023

On the train, which Bako barely makes it to, she finally feels freer. She can talk about her life: the self-rejection, the unreflective attraction to girls, the gang rape during her student years, the unhappy marriage, the coming out, and then – meeting Larysa and making her way to her. Bako is most worried about her student daughters, who are staying in Kazakhstan. Her daughters are the only people who support her.

Bako comes across as naive, overly cheerful, but she is a person who has revealed her identity to her hyper-conservative family and withstood the pressure. A lesbian in a Muslim post-Soviet environment who survived. And she leaves her whole life for her beloved one. Who she had never seen in real life, whom she had never touched.

Larysa also seems naive, because despite having lived with her abusive husband, despite her son's severe disability, despite the betrayal of her former lover, despite the need to flee from the war, she still believes in love and repeats that "everything will be all right".

The meeting of Larysa and Bako at the train station in Lviv is tender and romantic. Like their first days together. Exploring sensations and bodies. From Kazakhstan, Bako brought a ring for Larisa – to immediately get engaged with her. And also – a huge plastic bucket of instant coffee, the one that Larysa’s sons like, and which is not sold at the shops in Lviv. They compare the identical tattoos each of them got at a distance. They somewhat don’t match in scale, however. Bako’s ones are bigger.

Larysa and Bako's first meeting, Lviv, November, 2023