Iryna Tsilyk

Iryna Tsilyk is a filmmaker, writer and screenwriter from Kyiv. Her award-winning film THE EARTH IS BLUE AS AN ORANGE has won the “Directing Award: World Cinema Documentary” at Sundance Film Festival 2020, as well as numerous other honors. This film has been also officially selected to the Berlinale film festival, IDFA, CPH:DOX, Hot Docs and more than 100 other International film festivals. Previously, Tsilyk directed short documentary and fiction films. ROCK. PAPER. GRENADE is her debut full-length fiction project which is based on the novel of Ukrainian writer and Iryna’s husband Artem Chekh. At the moment, Chekh is serving in the Ukrainian Army. Tsilyk and their son stay in Kyiv.

“I wanted to make this film to talk with my father as well  as all those adults who were broken in the 90's, despite and thanks to whom we’ve grown up. Now we’ve become adults, and we understand you much better, do you hear? In my search for a way to tell the story, I came to the main conclusion: our film should not become another gloomy  depressive film "about the 90s". This film is a slice of time through the eyes of a child, and in addition to the obvious drama of the daily existence  of adults and children, there must be a lot of ironies, the ability to laugh at yourself, and love between the characters. Balancing between the tragedy and the comedy, the cruelty  and the gentility is the thin path we planned to take on.”