Iryna Tsilyk

As the world holds its breath watching Russia continue its assault on the Ukraine, Ukrainian filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk sat down with HFPA journalist Lena Basse to share her gut-wrenching experience of discovering life imitating art.   The two discuss her film The Earth is Blue as Orange, which followed a single mother and her four children trying to live a normal life in the war zone of southern and eastern Ukraine in the wake of Russia's annex of Crimea in 2014, which won for Best Director in the 2020 Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Documentary Category as well as how that now compares to life in Kyiv, where she’s trapped with husband, author Artem Chekh, and eleven-year-old son Andrii, and how her hopes and dreams for the future are keeping her going through this indescribable time.