Liza Smith is a film director whose documentary film “School No. 3,” co-directed by German theater director Georg Genoux, won an award at the 67th Berlinale Film Festival.
The film tells the story of 13 teenagers growing up in Ukraine’s war-torn Donbas.
“It’s a story about life. We didn’t shoot, we lived. We didn’t go for a walk to film, we just had a walk. As a result, the teenagers didn’t feel like they were characters,” she explains. “I didn’t speak for the characters. I listened to their stories.”
The movie is an extended documentary theater project “My Mykolayivka,” staged in a city of 15,000 people in Donetsk Oblast, some 640 kilometers from Kyiv. Mykolayivka was severely shelled early in July 2014, when the Ukrainian army was storming Russian-led forces who had occupied the city.
The city was liberated in a couple of days.
The film received the Grand Prix in the Generation 14+ category at the 67th Berlinale Film Festival in March.
Tabor Production, where Smith works and which co-produced the movie, decided to invest part of the prize money in Mykolayivka. They announced a competition for a Hr 20,000 grant ($800) for local social and art projects. Smith says she wanted to give something back to the city had given so much to her.
Born in Odesa into a family of entrepreneurs, Smith always had a passion for filming. She shot funny videos with classmates and even teachers, and directed plays, involving her friends in her projects.
After finishing school, she continued studying at a theater lyceum, and at the same time studied mathematics at a college.
But as it was difficult to cope with both things, and after a year of learning math she took her last exam in analytical geometry, and on the same day got on a train, moved to Kyiv, and entered the I. K. Karpenko-Kary National University of Theater, Cinema and Television.
Full of ideas, now Smith wants to direct a film to uncover corruption in Ukraine’s tax sphere.
Smith believes every director wants audiences to ask themselves questions after watching a movie. Then it feels like the job is rewarding, that something can change, that somebody cares.
“I actually don’t think that’s important to achieve something by the age of 30. It’s important to achieve something when the person is ready. It’s like the Mozart complex, as one actor called it.
