The winners of the International Ethnographic Film Festival OKO were announced 2021
The film festival took place on September 11-18 - online and on September 16, 17, 18 - offline in the south of Ukraine in Bessarabia in the town of Bolhrad, which celebrated its 200th anniversary this year.
The festival, supported by Ukrainian State Film Agency, received more than 500 applications from 73 countries and covered all continents of our planet this year. The program of the film festival was divided into international and national full-length and short film competitions. 34 films were presented in the international competition program: 8 full-length and 26 short films. The national competition of full meters included 10 films, the short program – 7 films.
The program of the screenings was created in the format of a trip: every day the audience went on a movie trip to a certain region of the world, and at the end of the day returned home to see the pictures of national production. In total, the viewers have watched 60 films and traveled to 42 countries.
In addition, this year “OKO” presented a new, non-competitive section with feature and documentary films on ethnography, anthropology, culture, as well as a retrospective “Africa in Focus”, which included the best works from the African continent from last year’s edition of the festival.
Three screens were working for three days at three locations in the center of Bolhrad. A big part of the audience consisted of schoolchildren from the nearest schools. After watching the films, they discussed them and gave their votes to the pictures they thought are worth getting the audience award.
Discussion panels were held every day on the central square raised such important topics as “Tradition and Cinema”, “Tradition and Politics”, “Tradition and Discrimination”.
Guests and directors from other cities of Ukraine, Bulgaria, France and Syria also came to Bolhrad to present their films.