logo

«Almost Holy» in Ukraine.

19 March

Within the cinematographic festival Dokufest, the premiere of the film about the head of the charity fund “Pilgrim” and pastor of the Church of Good Changes, Gennadiy Mokhnenko, had a great success.

 

The film under the title “Almost Holy» had been made for 2 years by the titled cinematographers. Among them there are Terrence Malik (three-time Oscar nominee and winner of the “Golden Palm” in Cannes), the composer Atticus Ross has an Oscar and the most authoritative in musical world Grammy award. The sound editor of the film who worked in Mariupol for a few weeks, used to be one of the soundmen in the team of the famous “The Shawshank redemption” (with 7 Oscar nominees). The director of the film – Steve Hoover is a winner of the very prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

 

The documentalists came to Mariupol within 2012 -2014 multiple times and day by day they made footage of every day of the life of the pastor, his family and watched from the camera lens the life and activity of the charity fund “Pilgrim”. While the footage was being made, the children and staff got in numerous situations including quite extreme ones.

 

The world premiere of the film took place in New York at the authoritative “Tribeca Film Festival”. Within the months passed after the premiere the film has received quite a few of awards at the film festivals in different countries of the world.

 

For instance, in Russia, in December 2015, at the biggest documentary festival “ArtDocFest” the film “Almost holy” was awarded the main prize – the Grand Prix. And in February this year it was also acknowledged by the authoritative American organization Social Impact Media Awards SIMA as the best documentary among 293 films from 93 countries of the world.

 

On his Facebook page pastor Gennadiy writes:

“I haven’t heard the phrase “Do you happen to have a spare ticket” since I was 10. I thank all of those who came to see the Ukrainian premiere of the “Almost Holy”. I apologize to those who had to sit in the aisles and to those who couldn’t get to the hall at all. And I am sorry that I was stuck in the airport and couldn’t get back in time from my missionary trip to Africa. I am still in the airport. We slept on the floor but in Paris!!))) The Paris airport couldn’t receive us in the morning so we were waiting in London for 8 hours and now we are finally back to Paris trying to find a way to Kiev. I could be given a hotel room since I have the European visa but my son was not let out to see the Champs – Elysees. I could not leave my former street kid alone in the middle of Europe… So I had to sleep in the pose of pretzel. It is a long term influence of street kids on me. As they say: “If you lie down with dogs…”

At the world premier I was standing on the red carpet right after my flight (and I didn’t take a shower for 2 days). And now during the premiere in Ukraine I am on the floor of an airport. It is obvious I am late for today’s premiere and tomorrows services. I am sorry, friends, I was inviting you to come to the premiere and I myself couldn’t not get there in time. I want to thank all the team of “Pilgrim” and of “Church of Good Changes”. The long-lasting round of applauds after the premiere was not to me but to you.

 

Subscribe to news

and get the latest news from our fund