Academy Award-winning Latvian producer Matiss Kaza, who co-wrote and produced Gints Zilbalodis’ best animated feature winner “Flow,” has boarded Ukrainian director Philip Sotnychenko’s sophomore film “Times New Roman,” which will take part in the Transilvania Pitch Stop co-production forum this week at the Transilvania Film Festival.
Kaza’s Trickster Pictures joins the pan-European co-production, which is lead produced by Ukraine’s Halyna Kryvorchuk of Viatel and Valeria Sochyvets and Sashko Chubko for Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema. Other co-production partners include Klementina Remeikaite and Laurynas Bareisa for afterschool (Lithuania), Hans Broich for Superzoom Film (Germany) and Ineke Smits for GoGoFilm (Netherlands).
Set in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “Times New Roman” follows the Kyiv-based artist Roman, a man in the throes of a midlife crisis who battles an alcohol addiction while wrestling with the emotional strain of the war. An unlikely way out arrives when Roman is offered an ambitious performance art project: a trio of reenactments of historical assassinations of Ukrainian political figures exiled in Europe, an artistic statement intended to remind the world of the long and brutal history of Russian meddling in Ukrainian affairs. Lured by a chance to flee Ukraine, Roman sets out on a trip across Europe, where he’ll soon discover that it’s not so easy to leave his demons behind.
