On December 2, the opening of the 19th Travelling Docudays UA took place in the small town of Vikersund in Norway. The film Cry My River by Olesia Morhunets-Isaienko was screened within the opening and was watched "together" with an audience from Poltava in Norway.

The screening took place with the support of the Travelling Docudays UA in Poltava Oblast in the Norwegian camp for displaced people Ødegården, where Ukrainian families fleeing the war gathered, and Norwegian and Ukrainian volunteers helping displaced people from Ukraine.

Screening in Norway within the 19th Travelling Docudays UA in a camp for Ukrainian displaced people

The screening of the documentary film Cry My River by Olesia Morhunets-Isaienko in Norway took place thanks to the Ukrainian volunteer Anastasiia Kelym.

This is not the first time Anastasiia has joined Docudays UA. In 2018-2021, she was the moderator of the festival screenings of Travelling Docudays UA in Poltava. In 2022, she decided to join the two-week Poltava Travelling Docudays UA from a distance and introduce Ukrainians in Norway to documentaries from Ukraine.

"The camp workers, including Ukrainians who moved to Norway a long time ago, were very interested in joining Docudays UA. They helped in every possible way to make the show happen,” says Anastasiia. “All the residents of Ødegården really liked it, they seemed to have returned to those times of peaceful life, when some interesting events were constantly happening, they asked to organise more screenings."

The film Cry My River tells the stories of river reservoirs, which director Olesia Morhunets-Isaienko connects with the reflection and memory of her audience. In the film, the director says that the state of each of the rivers is the result of the activity and inaction of each of them, not just climate changes.

"I was pleasantly surprised by the audience's reaction because I was not sure that people would now be able to accept a conversation about those problems of Ukraine that are not so directly related to the war," commented Anastasiia Kelym. "One of the viewers who was a volunteer during Docudays UA in Kyiv in 2019 was impressed by the beautiful scenery. This admiration was mixed with the shame she felt when she looked at the green water..."

A still from the film Cry My River by Olesia Morhunets-Isaienko

For the audience, the film became a reason to dive into the ecological context and the current environmental situation. "One of the event participants worked in the agricultural sector, so the film particularly interested her, and she helped the audience understand the connection between farming and the condition of the surrounding water bodies," says Anastasiia.

"Another woman who recently came with her grandson from the Dnipropetrovsk region," continues Anastasiia, "stressed the need to screen similar films in local schools. It was nice to see that plans are already being made for the next Travelling Docudays UA.

It was also nice that almost all the audience members joined the conversation (and there were 26 of them in total, currently there are 80 displaced persons living in the camp). They were happy to see a film about their home and expressed a desire to learn how to properly sort garbage and bring the acquired skills to Ukraine.

One of the camp workers noted that the young generation of Ukrainians is already completely different: they will not allow anyone to offend them. Therefore, she has no doubts that after the victory, everything will be different, and future generations will help to clean our rivers.

And I also hope that after the victory, we will pay more attention to the state of our water bodies. After watching the film, I wanted to know what I, as a citizen, can do for this," Anastasiya Kelym emphasised.

The screening took place with the support of the 19th Travelling Docudays UA in Poltava Oblast.