An Australian-Ukrainian made film ‘The Way Home’, about the 1932-33 Holdomor-Genocide, will be premiered on Sunday 19 January at the 34th Flickerfest International Short Film Festival at Bondi Beach, Sydney.
Directed by Australian-Ukrainian independent documentary filmmaker Stefan Bugryn, The Way Home tells the story of Maxim, a Ukrainian peasant farmer, who rebels against the forced collectivisation of his farm in 1930’s Ukraine. Arrested by local authorities and shipped off to forced labour camps in Siberia, Maxim steals away in the dead of night to begin the 1,000km journey home, in a bid to survive and return to his family.
Members of the producing team for ‘The Way Home’ include Stefan and Australian-Ukrainian filmmaker and journalist Julian Knysh, who is currently based in Kyiv.
Stefan Bugryn is an independent documentary filmmaker, who has dedicated his life to telling Ukrainian stories since 2016. In 2018, he won Best Director: Short Film Category, and Best Short Film at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival for the first instalment of his War Mothers documentary project. The film was officially backed and supported by Time Out Australia. The second instalment, ‘War Mothers: Unbreakable’, was one of 63 shorts films selected out of over 5,100 to have its world premiere at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.
In 2023, Stefan travelled to Kyiv to complete filming for ‘The Way Home’, a story 3 years in the making, and which honours a story important for many Ukrainians, including his grandparents.
Julian Knysh is a journalist and documentary film maker, currently based in Kyiv from where he is providing on-the-ground coverage and stories to Australian and global audiences. Julian has been featured in the Kyiv Post, has provided commentary for various Australian media outlets including the ABC, SBS and the Daily Telegraph, and has provided support to many Australian media teams visiting Ukraine.
See Stefan Byugryn’s The Way Home Director’s Statement below:
The Way Home is an incredibly personal story to many people and contains a story more relevant than ever for the world audience.
I’ve long wanted to tell the story of Holodomor, a man-made famine in 1930s Ukraine enforced by Stalin that killed 4M+ Ukrainians. When I was a boy, my grandparents would tell me the stories of how they personally survived, how many of their relatives did not, and the horrible conditions they endured.
In 2020, I was approached to tell my Baba’s story by the Ukrainian community, and from the media publication, Ukrainer. Sadly, by this point, dementia had set in, and Baba could no longer recount her stories. I was devastated; this important part of my family’s lineage was lost forever.
Determined to make up for this, I began searching for other stories within the Ukrainian community in Melbourne, Australia. This connected me with Halyna Hluchovera, a wonderful woman in her 90s who still remembered everything.
Halyna kindly shared with us the story of her grandfather, Maxim, and his incredible story of survival. Not long after our interviews, Halyna peacefully passed away in her sleep. This film was now Halyna’s last story for the world.
Not long after this, russia embarked on its full scale invasion of Ukraine, and my life was turned upside down. For the following year, I became committed to our community efforts to support Ukraine in its fight for survival.
Not long after this, my Baba sadly passed away.
In 2023, I travelled to Kyiv, and worked with a Ukrainian team to finalise the recreations of Maxim’s story. It was during this trip I realised the importance of our story, as Ukraine continues to fight for its survival, and its history can help inform the world of russia’s continuing brutality against its people.
