For three months in the frigid winter of 2013-2014, almost a million citizens of Ukraine took to the streets in an attempt to bring down a repressive government. That 93-day protest, which drew armed retaliation from the government supporting President Viktor Yanukovych, is the subject of “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom,” a new Netflix documentary from director Evgeny Afineevsky that is screening at the Venice, Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals.
A street-level chronicle of a fight that began when Yanukovych rejected a plan for Ukraine to join the European Union in favor of a backroom deal with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, “Winter on Fire” has drawn raves out of the festivals and will premiere on Netflix on Oct. 9.
“For me, ‘Winter on Fire’ is a cinematic monument to heroes, dedicated to the entire Ukranian nation and the true story of the Maidan Revolution of Dignity,” Afineevsky said in a director’s statement.
The director said he screened an early cut of the film for Angus Wall, David Fincher‘s longtime editor and also a collaborator on films with doc legend Errol Morris. Wall helped Afineevsky and producer John Battsek reshape and contextualize the film for audiences outside of Eastern Europe, in regions where the details of the Ukranian struggle were not as well known.
In the new trailer above, which is premiering exclusively on TheWrap, protesters and activists recall a brutal period that reshaped their country, and one whose echoes (both good and bad) still linger in Ukraine.
Over the past couple of years, Netflix Original Documentaries has become a major player in the non-fiction world, releasing the Oscar-nominated docs “The Square” in 2013 and “Virunga” in 2014.
