Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov has moved into pre-production on Kai, his first fiction feature since Rhino premiered in the Orizzonti competition at Venice five years ago. Principal photography is planned in Ukraine for the first half of 2027, and the project brings together producers from five countries.
The film takes place during the Revolution of Dignity in February 2014 and the first years of the Russo-Ukrainian war, including Russia’s occupation of Crimea. It follows a family going through its own crisis while the country around it is transformed. Sentsov says the script draws on his own life, including his son’s autism, his role in the Maidan protests and his work evacuating civilians from combat zones. He describes the result as “not strictly autobiographical, but it is deeply personal”.
He co-wrote the screenplay with Marina Stepanska, the Ukrainian writer-director behind Falling, which premiered in the East of the West section at Karlovy Vary. Sentsov has served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces since the full-scale invasion in 2022 and commands a battalion in the 47th Separate Mechanised Brigade Magura. His most recent film, the documentary Real, was put together from footage shot at the front in 2023. Co-producer Mike Downey, a former chair of the European Film Academy, said the new project brings Sentsov’s filmmaking much closer to home.
The shoot will take place in parts of Ukraine that face fewer air-raid alerts and attacks. Veterans and serving military personnel will be part of the crew, and the production wants to help people returning to civilian life find work in the film industry. Denis Ivanov and Sentsov are producing through Arthouse Traffic and Cry Cinema, with partners in Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic and France. Playtime, one of the French partners, is handling international sales. The Polish partner is Apple Film Production, the German partner ma.ja.de. fiction and the Czech partner Marlene Film Production.
Production funding has come from the European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian Films, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and the Polish Film Institute. Earlier development support came from the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, the Göteborg Film Fund and FILMBOOST, and Kai was presented at the Les Arcs Co-Production Village in 2022. Four years after that market presentation, the project is now close to cameras rolling, with casting and a firm start date still to be announced.
