Film Screening IFFWW: Porcelain war (by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev)

Feature Documentary Competition

Location 1: Embassy of the Czech Republic in London (26 Kensington Palace

Gardens, W84QY)

Time: 16:00 - 18:00

Tickets: £ 5

Attention! Each person may register for only one ticket, and it’s essential to provide your full name as it appears on your passport. Please also bring an ID document for verification at entry.

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Amidst the chaos and destruction of the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, three artists defiantly find inspiration and beauty as they defend their culture and their country. In a war waged by professional soldiers against ordinary civilians, Slava Leontyev, Anya Stasenko and Andrey Stefanov choose to stay behind, armed with their art, their cameras and, for the first time in their lives, their guns. Despite daily shelling, Anya finds resistance and purpose in her art, Andrey takes the dangerous journey to get his young family to safety abroad, and Slava becomes a weapons instructor for ordinary people who have become unlikely soldiers. As the war intensifies, Andrey picks up his camera to film their story, and on tiny porcelain figurines, Anya and Slava capture their idyllic past, uncertain present and hope for the future.

Co-directed by Leontyev and Brendan Bellomo, with extraordinary footage from first-time cinematographer Stefanov, Porcelain War embodies the passion and fight, that only an artist can put back into the world when it’s crumbling around them.

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

BRENDAN BELLOMO (Director, Writer, Editor) was the recipient of a 2009 Student Academy Award® for Live Action Narrative. Bellomo’s passion for storytelling was first sparked when he was a child. Beginning his career in visual effects, he supervised the 2012 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner and Oscar® nominee for Best Picture Beasts of the Southern Wild (Fox Searchlight). Most recently, Bellomo was the executive producer on the Netflix Original Chupa.

Bellomo worked closely with Annie Leibovitz on the global exhibit “Women: New Portraits” and designed the curriculum for the first visual effects course at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, which led him on the path to eventually pair with his directing partner, Slava Leontyev.

SLAVA LEONTYEV (Director, Film Subject) is a first-time director born into a family of biologists in Ukraine. Merging his love of nature and art, Leontyev has spent his life studying painting, photography, graphic design and art theory. Alongside his wife and longtime collaborator Anya Stasenko, Leontyev now creates the porcelain sculptures featured in this film. He is also a former soldier of the Ukrainian Special Forces and a highly regarded weapons instructor for civilians who are currently defending their country against Russian aggression.

ANYA STASENKO (Associate Producer, Film Subject) is a ceramics artist and experienced nature photographer who has been deeply engaged in the fine arts since her early childhood in Kharkiv, Ukraine. As such, Stasenko’s paintings have become her lifelong language. While studying at the Kharkiv School of Arts and Academy of Design and Arts, she developed a unique style of painting on ceramic miniatures. This is also where she began to collaborate with Slava Leontyev, now her husband. Together, they create the widely recognized tiny porcelain figurines featured in this film.

ANDREY STEFANOV (Director of Photography, Film Subject) was born in Feodosia, a town in Crimea, Ukraine, and received his artistic education in Kharkiv. He then returned to his home in Crimea, where he became an artisan winemaker and recognized oil painter. For many years Stefanov created fine art photography, landscape paintings and still lifes. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Stefanov and his friend Slava Leontyev decided to pick up film cameras, discovering a new medium to express their artistic perspectives. This is Stefanov’s first feature credit as a cinematographer.

ANIELA SIDORSKA (Producer, Writer, Editor) is a Polish-born refugee whose love of film began when she first experienced Western cinema in her early childhood. After studying art in San Francisco, she went on to be a visual effects compositor on Captain America: The First Avenger, a compositing supervisor on the

2012 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner and Oscar nominee for Best Picture Beasts of the Southern Wild, and a visual effects producer on such films as Lee Daniels’ The Butler and The Expendables 3. Her small-screen credits include the series “Boardwalk Empire,” “The Blacklist,” “The Americans” and “Elementary.” Most recently, she was involved in creature development for the Netflix Original Chupa and was a co-writer on the feature film, Extra Ordinary, now in development.

Upon discovering porcelain artists in Ukraine, Sidorska went on to develop, write and produce this film. She is a voting member of the Producers Guild of America (PGA) and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

PAULA DUPRÉ PESMEN (Producer, Writer) is an Emmy Award®- and Grammy Award®- winning producer who produced the Oscar-winning feature documentary The Cove. In 2010, she was named producer of the year by the PGA. Pesmen launched her film career on the producing teams of such narrative features as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Rent, Mrs. Doubtfire, Home Alone 2 and Stepmom. She produced the renowned documentary features Chasing Ice (Emmy winner, Sundance Cinematography Award, SXSW Audience Award), Keep on Keepin’ On (Audience Award winner at Tribeca and Palm Springs film festivals) and Quincy (Grammy winner).

For her philanthropic work Pesmen was named a “Local Hero” by Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine.

CAMILLA MAZZAFERRO (Producer) began her career at PWC and RadicalMedia, producing a number of award-winning commercial campaigns, music videos and short films. Most recently she produced feature documentaries My Sister Liv (2022 Karlovy Vary and Doc NYC), A Fire Inside (2021 Sydney Film Festival), Machine (2019 Melbourne International Film Festival) and the Netflix Original Chef ’s Table. Other projects include Homebodies (SXSW 2016), Ian Thorpe: The Swimmer and Girls Can’t Surf (2021 Tribeca Film Festival).

OLIVIA AHNEMANN (Producer) has been producing award-winning documentary films for over 20 years. She produced 2020’s Youth v Gov (Doc NYC, Jackson Wild Grand Teton Award), which was released globally on Netflix; 2018’s The Human Element, featuring photographer James Balog (San Francisco International Film Festival, SCAD Savannah Film Festival’s Best Feature Documentary Award); Stephanie Soechtig’s Under the Gun (2016 Sundance Film Festival), which was distributed by Epix/Lionsgate; and Louie Psihoyos’ Racing Extinction (2015 Sundance Film Festival), which was distributed by Discovery.

In 2016 Ahnemann was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. She co-produced the Oscar-winning feature documentary The Cove, which garnered over 70 awards globally, including the PGA’s Best Documentary award.

PICTUREHOUSE (North American Distributor) is a Los Angeles-based film marketing and distribution company led by CEO Bob Berney and COO Jeanne R. Berney. The company acquires, markets and distributes global content across all platforms. Originally formed in 2005 as a joint venture between Time Warner's HBO Films and New Line Cinema, the Picturehouse brand has a long history of storied excellence.

SONGBIRD STUDIOS (Production Company) is an Australian-born company producing creatively ambitious documentaries that reflect its passion for bringing extraordinary stories to the screen with uncompromising craft and execution.

IMAGINARY LANE (Production Company) is a Los Angeles-based production company with a focus on developing narrative features, as well as feature-length documentaries about ordinary people living extraordinary lives.

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