The penultimate day of the third edition of Ukraine’s first and only LGBTQ+ film festival, Sunny Bunny in Kyiv, will be remembered for a loud, sleepless night.
And it wasn’t because of the parties — it was due to a massive Russian missile and drone attack, one of the largest since the invasion began. The morning after, I met the film festival director Bohdan Zhuk and PR director Tasia Pugach on the bench in front of the Zhovten movie theater.
“At some point I felt a blast wave,” Zhuk said while rolling a cigarette, as Pugach recounted how she spent the night with a cat in an underground parking. Regardless, they’ve got work planned for the day, which includes constantly adapting to new realities. While the Sunny Bunny festival is a war baby born in 2023, this year’s edition faced other obstacles.
A major blow came from the cancellation of USAID funding, which the festival had relied on in past editions.
“It was a significant amount of money, but our lives didn’t depend on it. I realized that we could definitely fundraise, find other partnerships and solutions. Because who can do it if not us? There must be some kind of extraordinary situation for us to cancel the festival,” said Zhuk.
The festival’s third edition cost about 60,000 euros, which they pieced together from scraps. “Generally, we’ve never been able to raise a proper budget from one or more donors; it’s rather a small support from lots of different national and international sources,” he added.
As in the previous year, the Ukrainian State Film Agency provided a certain amount of funding, as did major international partners such as the Goethe Institute and the International Renaissance Foundation, among others.
Nevertheless, Zhuk shared that “today, there is a notable cut in funding for Ukrainian cultural projects. Some of them shut down completely.”
But what has helped significantly is cooperation with embassies, of which the festival has as many as 10, from Canada to Argentina. The UK, for instance, provided a highly popular retrospective of British queer cinema. Considering all the challenges, the compiled program is genuinely impressive with 60 films that include a mix of ultra-fresh Sundance/Berlinale titles as “Peter Hujar’s Day” or “Lesbian Space Princesses,” with hits from last year like “I Am Not Everything I Want to Be” or “Viet and Nam.”
But really dark times were just ahead. As the final layout of the festival was underway, tragedy struck: Zhuk’s brother died at the front defending the country. Around the same time, his irreplaceable programmer, Viktor Hlon, was mobilized. “We managed to get through it through tremendous mutual support in our team,” said Zhuk.
Air raid alerts remain a daily challenge for the festival. As soon as they start, the movie is paused and the audience is obliged to go to the bomb shelter. When the threat is over, the movie is put back on play. But if the alert lasts more than 30 minutes, the screening is postponed. This year, Pugach and Zhuk only had to postpone four screenings.
Despite the already brutal external threats, the festival also suffered from internal ones, coming from its own fellow citizens. Sunny Bunny is well-acquainted with homophobic attacks, as in 2014, when the event was still only a sidebar of the Kyiv International Film Festival Molodist in Ukraine: During the screening of the film “Summer Nights,” the main hall of the cinema was set on fire. Now at Sunny Bunny, dozens of police officers patrol the venue. This year’s festival kept them busy, such as on April 19, when members of the Prava Molod (“The Right Youth” in Ukrainian) gathered to express their discontent and defend “traditional values.” The police detained about 60 people.
Although the team is used to threats, this year, the situation was inflamed by the fact that the festival’s midpoint fell on Orthodox Easter, April 20. Social media users debated whether it is appropriate to hold a queer film festival on such a holiday but, “for some reason, no one has attacked many other entertainment events on this day. It’s just a convenient excuse for homophobes,” said Pugach.
The paradox is that these manifestations, on the contrary, bring Ukraine closer to its common enemy, as in Russia, homophobia is flourishing with incredible force right now. “This self-contradiction is a fertile ground for sociological research,” agreed Zhuk.
Nevertheless, the negative PR brought the festival even more attention. “We received many words of support, and some who defended us wrote that this scandal reminded them that Sunny Bunny has begun, and it’s time to book tickets,” added Pugach with a smile.
Beyond combating homophobia, the festival also wants to bring diversity to queer discourse through its programming and to move away from established clichés. For example, Zhuk is personally concerned that the leading themes of queer cinema are still cisgender white gay men, a dominance he wanted to move away from in his festival. He is proud that they have a film about intersex people, the documentary “Who Am I Not,” which he called “a great rarity in modern cinema.”
For the second time, the Sunny Bunny festival hosted a short film pitching competition, offering a monetary prize and aiming to stimulate more homegrown Ukrainian films. Zhuk cited the case of one young Ukrainian director, Vadim Mochalov: “All three years, he has been actively volunteering at the festival. Last year, he took part in the pitching and received a special mention, and this year, his film ‘The Story’ is already in the international competition.”
The vibe of the established sense of community is palpable on location as young cinephiles binge-watch films. Joining a few of them in the smoking corner for an enthusiastic discussion of the film “Queens of Joy,” I felt this flow of excitement, which today is rarely found on the streets of Ukraine. For them, Sunny Bunny is a way to distract from the war and get, if not a physical safe space, then at least a mental one.
“It’s exhausting, to put it mildly,” Zhuk said. “But I see the impact — satisfied people, shaped community, or even when someone tells me that the festival changed their life — it’s incredibly motivating and keeps us moving, no matter what.”
Yet the festival’s closing night could not be celebratory. That overnight Russian attack on Kyiv killed 12 people and injured 87, with April 25 declared a day of mourning. The planned Sunny Bunny techno party was canceled, and the shortened awards ceremony began with a minute of silence. The Sundance premiere, “Cactus Pears,” ended up winning the top prize in the main competition (the full list of winners can be seen here). Calling the whole team to the stage, Zhuk thanked the audience for their presence, the Armed Forces of Ukraine for their defense, and invited everyone to the fourth edition next year.
