Best Friend Forever has inked distribution deals for Kateryna Gornostai’s Timestamp with Dulac Distribution in France and Cherry Pickers for Belgium and the Netherlands ahead of the film’s world premiere in competition at Berlin Film Festival on Thursday (February 20).
The film focuses on a school in Ukraine whose students and teachers are doing their best to continue their daily lives under the constant threat of war.
The only documentary selected for this year’s competition, it is also the first Ukrainian-directed film to compete for the festival’s Golden Bear since Kira Muratova’s Three Stories in 1997. It shows students doing ostensibly ordinary things like learning maths, taking gym class, and coming of age as the danger of war looms around them.
Timestamp is produced by Ukraine’s 2Brave Productions and co-produced by Luxembourg-based a_BAHN, the Netherlands’ Rinkel Docs with France’s Cinephage Productions on board as associate producers.
Shot in multiple locations in Ukraine from 2023-2024, it is based on a concept from Ukrainian educational organisation Osvitoria which executive produces. Gornostai’s first feature Stop-Zemlia premiered in the festival’s Generation 14plus selection in 2021 where it won the Crystal Bear award from the Youth Jury.
“First reactions to the film have been positive, and several territories are already under advanced discussions. Buyers are looking forward to bringing this intimate glimpse into what it is like for children and those who care for them to do ordinary daily activities in such extraordinary times,” Best Friend Forever’s Martin Gondre told Screen.
The Brussels-based sales outfit is also at EFM with Jun Li’s Panorama selection Queerpanorama, about a man impersonating other men he has sex with as he searches for his true identity, and Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill fresh off its best director win in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition.
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