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RETURN TO UKRAINE

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Return to Ukraine

What does the crisis in Ukraine mean to the world? Alex Shprintsen was born in eastern Ukraine but has lived most of his life in Canada. He goes on a journey into his past in order to understand the present. A journey that is political, personal and painful: political, because it tries to make sense of what is behind the possible breakup of one of Europe’s largest countries. Personal, because Alex’s Jewish family story echoes the political crisis in Ukraine. And painful, because of the old wounds that must be poked.

At the heart of the story is the filmmaker’s reunion with his former classmates in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s 2nd-largest city, located on the geographical edge of Ukraine’s war with Russia-supported rebels. During the course of his journey, Alex discovers an awful truth about an act of anti-Semitism that happened in his school just after he left 40 years ago. He also examines his grandfather’s KGB file and its paradoxical effect on the life of his entire family in the middle of the Holocaust. All along, his personal history helps explain many of the current events because they deal with Ukraine’s Soviet past, with the power of propaganda and with the Ukrainian-Russian language debate. RETURN TO UKRAINE  tells a complicated political news story through the eyes and experiences of a filmmaker with a foot in several worlds.