Press releases

MINSK, 1 October (BelTA) – The feature film Crystal Swan by Belarusian director Darya Zhuk has been submitted for the Academy Award, BelTA learned from producer of the movie Valery Dmitrochenko.

The film was chosen by the Belarusian Oscar Committee for the nomination for the Academy Award. The movie meets all the criteria set by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The application was officially sent, Valery Dmitrochenko informed.

Crystal Swan was submitted for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

The Belarusian Oscar Committee includes seven people: Artistic Director of the National Film Studio Belarusfilm Igor Porshnev, Belarusfilm Director General Vladimir Karachevsky, head for marketing, sales and advertising at Belarusfilm Yuri Igrusha, Program Director of the Minsk International Film Festival Listapad Igor Sukmanov, documentary movie director Viktor Aslyuk, member of the European Film Academy, Director of the Pioneer Movie Theater Svetlana Savchik and producer Valery Dmitrochenko.

According to the academy rules, each country has the right to submit one feature-length motion picture that must be first released theatrically in their respective countries between 1 October of the previous year and 30 September of the current year and publicly exhibited for at least seven consecutive days in a commercial motion picture theater. The application was sent together with the film distribution certificate.

Crystal Swan is a coming-of-age story about a young woman in post-soviet Belarus in the mid 1990s. She loves house music and dreams of going to Chicago where this music style emerged a decade earlier. To get a visa to America, she fakes her visa application by buying a letter of employment on the black market and instead of America the heroine ends up by the phone in a small town waiting for the US embassy to call.

The movie was screened in Belarus. Taking part in its production were Demarche Film Studio, Belarusfilm, companies Unfound Content, Fusion Features, Vice Films (USA), as well as German and Russian producers.

The international premiere of the movie took place at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on 30 June. The movie won the Grand Prix of the Odessa International Film Festival in July and received two prizes of the Co-Production. Window to the World competition at the Window to Europe film festival in Vyborg in August. In September it won the Grand Prix of the Almaty Film Festival. Crystal Swan premiered in Minsk on 29 August and hit the big screen in Belarus on 30 August.

Darya Zhuk was born in Minsk. She moved to the United States when she was 16. She graduated from Harvard University and Columbia University in the United States. She worked at HBO and shot a number of short-length films that won prizes at international film festivals. One of them, The Real American, received a diploma of the Minsk International Film Festival Listapad in 2015.