Join CSEEES and Dr. Alisa Ballard Lin (Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures) for a special film screening and discussion with director Oksana Mysina.
This screening will feature three short award-winning films directed by Oksana Mysina: Cherry Orchard. War, Escape, and Love Is Stronger Than Fear. All three films were made in the past three years. Each one illuminates, in poetic, documentary style, the struggle for peace and democracy in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Cherry Orchard. War depicts acting improvisations built on themes from the plays of Anton Chekhov but reworked to wrestle through the post–2022 collapse of Russian culture and of Russia’s hope for democracy. Escape presents the real-life story of a multigenerational family’s escape from war-torn Ukraine, as told by the mother who led their trek from Dnipro to the Polish border. Love Is Stronger Than Fear features the stories and statements of political prisoners in Belarus, including Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin.
Oksana Mysina, born in Ukraine, had a long career as a star actor on the very best Moscow stages, as well as in Russian film and television, until 2018. At that time she and her husband, the American theater critic John Freedman, left Russia for political reasons and resettled in Greece. Mysina is a highly acclaimed actor, director, and musician who has long vocally opposed the Putin regime. In recent years she has directed a number of award-winning films under her studio Free Flight Films. These films make powerful political statements about Putin’s rule, authoritarianism in Belarus, and the Russo-Ukrainian War.
This event is being hosted in conjunction with SLAVIC 3711: Theatre, Identity and Citizenship in Eastern Europe and is free and open to Ohio State students, faculty/staff, and members of the public.
