Anna Yutchenko

Your family can accept your otherness. But can you accept the normality of your family? Your family can accept that you are not like others. But could you accept that your family is normal? Its the story of one coming out that has lasted for a year.

A family with five children flees the war raging in their home village on the Russian border. They end up in Mshanets, a farming village on the other side of the country, remote and unknown. Here the family starts building a new home. At the same time, two documentary makers come to the village, looking for a story. In the Lymar family they find the ideal characters for their film. But one day, when the renovation of their house is almost finished, the family disappears. The filmmakers go in search of their characters and along the way they try to find an answer to the question: what does a person need to feel at home?

A grey-haired music teacher from a small Ukrainian island turns into a military conductor at soldier funerals while trying to keep afloat his children ensemble.

Loran considers himself an author and a man of art, while for the others he is merely an idler. Debt collectors are chasing after him, but Loran still enjoys his life, no matter how hopeless it might be.

In February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the apartment my friend and I were renting in Lviv became a transit point. Friends, acquaintances and strangers were leaving for safer cities in Ukraine and abroad, and we began to host people in our apartment. Some stayed for one night, and some for several. No one stayed for long, but they all left their stories. That's how our home became a shared home.

"Thus they will sing" is a movie-collage that interweaves human experiences, soromitski (shaming) songs and the flow of modern life. Soromnitski (shaming) songs are traditional songs (spivankas) with erotic motifs, sung at weddings, vechornytsi (evening parties), and feasts. Although they were quite shameful to sing in everyday life, they were broadcasting the man and woman's behavior patterns. The tradition of creating the spivankas (these songs) still exists. Ostap Bohoslovets from Nadvirna town re-analyses the modern world of youth in his own spivankas