Olga Stuga
Director · Documentary Feature
My motivation for my project “The Second Line“
Valery, the protagonist, is my father. I had this idea of filming his last year before the retirement since long time already. I wanted to follow him transmitting his experience and knowledge to a young intern doctor, focus on those master-student relationships.
Something he was dreaming of sharing with his children but none of them followed his path. After the full-scale invasion of February 2022, I was asking myself what I can do as a filmmaker at this moment in Ukraine. I was doubting my ability of making journalistic reports, editing videos of the horrors turned to be unbearable. And then I remembered about this idea. It is a human story nobody can tell except me, it is a personal experience I may share, hoping that it will talk to those foreign audiences who turn their backs away from actualities. I believe this intimate story can talk to a happy family anywhere in the world. People are living their life without imagining how everything they were building for years may turn upside down just in one night. It is the story of many families in Ukraine, my family is just one of them.
How do you plan to use the scholarship?
The scholarship will be used to cover my shooting expenses on professional equipment, consumables, transport, medical clothes, etc. It will also cover my living costs (food, medicine, utilities, etc) and allow me to focus on the project without looking for small jobs here and there. It will give me the time to develop the project while I look for collaborators, a chance to shoot more of valuable footage as the time is limited.
