Bohdan Prykhodko
BERNADSKY GARDEN
In Kramatorsk, fifteen kilometres from the frontline, municipal workers maintain a garden, an oasis of order amid destruction, while the world around them slowly falls apart
SYNOPSIS
Bernadsky Garden is an observational documentary essay set in Kramatorsk, a city fifteen kilometres from the frontline. Over the course of changing seasons, the film follows a public garden that remains a space of care, beauty, and routine amid the gradual approach of war. The garden and its municipal workers become a portrait of a community trying to preserve normality while living under the constant threat of evacuation and destruction. The film contains no interviews and never leaves the garden. War is present only through sounds, traces, and absences. As the seasons change, so does the garden, revealing a fragile world struggling to hold on to life even as its future becomes increasingly uncertain.
DIRECTOR
Bohdan Prykhodko
PRODUCER
Eva Zurian
PRODUCTION COMPANY
IMA Bolero
COUNTRY
Ukraine
Bohdan Prykhodko
DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY
Bohdan Prykhodko is a Ukrainian documentary filmmaker from the Donetsk region. He graduated from the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University, where he studied documentary film directing. He has directed three short documentary films, two video art projects, and several commercial, social, and theatre productions. Alongside filmmaking, he organises cultural and ethnographic initiatives in Eastern Ukraine.
Bernatsky Garden is a film about fragility, care and the persistence of life where it seems impossible to endure. The garden is part of my childhood and one of the places through which I experienced the transformation of the Donetsk region over the past decade. Rather than portraying war through destruction or violence, I focus on a space people continue to maintain despite the uncertainty surrounding them. I approach the garden as a living organism whose seasonal changes form the film’s dramatic structure. The most significant events remain outside the frame and are felt through sound, atmosphere and small details. Through this film, I want to preserve the memory of a place that still contains beauty, care and everyday life. For me, Bernatsky Garden is both a portrait of a disappearing home and a reminder that the Donetsk region is more than ruins. It is a place that continues to hold on to life
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Eva Zurian
PRODUCER’S BIOGRAPHY
Eva Zurian is a Ukrainian producer, distributor, and festival programmer specialising in documentary cinema. She currently works at Suspilne Ukraine and serves as Programme Director of Mriya International Film Festival in Brussels. Since 2021, she has been a pre-selector for Docudays UA. Her work focuses on international film distribution, festival strategy, audience development, and cultural partnerships, with experience across European film festivals and documentary industry platforms.
PRODUCER’S STATEMENT
Bernadsky Garden offers a perspective on Ukraine that rarely reaches international screens. Rather than focusing on military events or destruction, the film observes how people continue to care for a place whose future has become increasingly uncertain. The garden allows us to look at frontline reality through routine, beauty, and attachment to place rather than through the events that usually define media and festival narratives about war. The project follows a single location over time, allowing the gradual transformation of both the space and the community around it to become visible. As the project continues to develop, it becomes not only an observation of the present, but also a time capsule preserving an image of a place that is disappearing faster than we can fully comprehend.
Production company profile
Bolero is a Ukrainian media company with over twenty years of experience in audio production, content creation, and multimedia technologies. As one of the pioneers of the Ukrainian indoor media market, the company operates a nationwide media network across Ukraine. Alongside its commercial activities, Bolero supports independent audiovisual projects and documentary filmmaking through its production division.
Where are we at?
TOTAL ESTIMATED BUDGET
14.000 €
NEEDED FOR COMPLETION
8.800 €
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