Olga

Switzerland/Ukraine/France, 87m, DCP

Showtimes & Tickets

Screened June 24–30, 2022

Olga (Anastasia Budiashkina) is a talented teenage Ukrainian gymnast exiled in Switzerland, dreaming of Olympic gold and trying to fit in with her new team in her new home. As she prepares for the European Championships, the Ukrainian people back home in Kyiv rise up in what has become known as the Maidan Revolution, suddenly involving everyone she cares about. Olga is left a powerless, distant bystander as her mother, an investigative journalist, faces danger as she challenges the brutal Yanukovich regime. Incorporating documentary footage from the 2013 uprising, Olga is a tense, sensitively handled tale of exile reflecting the clash between the personal and the political in a young woman’s search for identity. A Kino Lorber release

In French, Ukrainian, and Russian; with English subtitles

A film by Elie Grappe

[A] prophetic movie about the agony of exile… whose ideas and emotions have come into a fierce new focus.”

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian 

Shot with a documentary-style naturalism and propulsive restlessness that mirrors Olga’s ferocious drive, this is a terrific, timely feature debut.”

Wendy Ide, Observer