THE LEADING ROLE / ГОЛОВНА РОЛЬ

3 days ago
2 min read

2016 / 65' / documentary / Ukraine

A film portrait of Serhiy Bukovsky’s mother—the actress Nina Antonova, who played nearly a hundred roles but achieved true fame on only one occasion. Through her story, the director reflects on the acting profession, the passage of time, memory, and the value of a life devoted to cinema, whilst at the same time seeking to understand himself.

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DIRECTOR- SERHIY BUKOVSKY

Biography

Serhiy Bukovsky was born in 1960 in Bashkiria, an autonomous republic of the former Soviet Union. His father was film director Anatolii Bukovsky, and his mother was actress Nina Antonova. He is a citizen of Ukraine and lives in Kyiv.

He studied film directing at the Film Faculty of the I. Karpenko-Kary Kyiv State Institute of Theatre Arts. After serving in the Soviet Army, he worked for more than ten years at the Ukrainian Studio of Documentary and Newsreel Films.

His 20-minute black-and-white documentary Tomorrow Is a Holiday (1987), made during the early years of Perestroika, received critical acclaim, professional recognition, and widespread audience appreciation.

Over a career spanning more than 40 years, Bukovsky has directed over 40 documentary films and television documentaries. His works have received awards at numerous prestigious international film festivals.

From 1985 to 1998, he headed the Documentary Programs Department at the Internews International Media Center and later at STB Television.

In 1994, he completed a professional directing training program in the United States organized by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

From 1998 to 2003, Bukovsky headed the documentary directing program at the I. Karpenko-Kary State University of Theatre Arts. One of his students, Ihor Strembitskyi, won the Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005 for his graduation film Wayfarers (Podorozhni), marking the first Palme d'Or in the history of Ukrainian cinema.

Today, Serhiy Bukovsky is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Film and Television Directing and Screenwriting at the I. Karpenko-Kary Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema, and Television.

He has conducted masterclasses and delivered lectures at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the Munich University of Television and Film (Bavaria Film Institute), Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Southern California, and the University of Chicago, as well as in Warsaw and Wrocław, Poland. He maintains close creative collaborations with documentary filmmakers, producers, and educators both in Ukraine and internationally.

In 2014, together with his wife, screenwriter Victoria Bondar, he founded the Serhiy Bukovsky DOC Workshop, a training program for emerging documentary filmmakers. Since its establishment, the workshop's participants have received recognition and awards at international film festivals for their graduation projects.

Bukovsky is a member of the National Filmmakers' Union of Ukraine, the European Film Academy, the Ukrainian Film Academy, and a Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine. He was awarded the honorary title People's Artist of Ukraine in 2008.

He is the recipient of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine (2004) and the Vasyl Stus Prize (2023) and was awarded the Order of Merit, Third Class, in 2021.

Selected filmography