FIRST IN UKRAINE LGBTQIA+ FILM FESTIVAL SUNNY BUNNY ANNOUNCES PART OF THE PROGRAM AND PRESENTS IDENTITY

SUNNY BUNNY film festival, which grew out of the eponymous program of the Kyiv International Film Festival Molodist, announces the first part of the program — a competition for full-length fiction films and two non-competition programs.

The first SUNNY BUNNY festival will be held in Kyiv from June 22 to 28, 2023. The main venues  of the festival will be Zhovten and KINO42 cinemas. 

The first SUNNY BUNNY will introduce viewers to more that 60 LGBTQIA+ films and include more than five programs, including a Ukrainian retrospective, a collection on LGBTQ military, and several short programs — Ukrainian and international. Today the festival team announces part of the program: the international competition for full-length fiction films and the non-competition programs New Colors, dedicated to emerging talents and debutants, and Documentary.

Among the films in the full-length section of the International Competition, 11 films will be presented, including: Neptune Frost directed by Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams, Shall I Compare You to a Summer's Day by Mohammad Shawky Hassan, My Emptiness and I by Spanish director Adrián Silvestre, The Blue Caftan by Maryam Touzani, the Brazilian film Follow the Protocol by Fábio Leal, Concerned Citizen by Israeli director Idan Haguel, Silver Haze by Sasha Polak, the US film Mutt by Vuk Lungulov-Klotz, Drifter by German director Hannes Hirsch, Portuguese Wolf and Dog by Claudia Varejão, and the Swedish-Norwegian film So Damn Easy Going by Christoffer Sandler.

Competition screenings will be run together with sessions of several non-competition programs. It's important for SUNNY BUNNY to make the film experience broader and more diverse. Therefore, viewers can expect 9 exciting films in the New Colors program. Among them is the French film Three Nights a Week by Florent Gouëlou, which was the opening film of  Critics' Week at the Venice Film Festival in 2022; the winner of the Teddy Award of the Berlin International Film Festival 2023 — the Nigerian film All the Colors in the World  Are Between Black and White by Babatunde Apalowo; the winner of the Compass Perspective Award of this year's Berlinale Bones and Names directed by Fabian Stumm, the film Eismayer by David Wagner, which won the Grand Prize at the 2022 Venice Critics' Week, and the British film Medusa Deluxe by Thomas Hardiman, which competed for the Best Debut Award at the 2022 London and Sao Paulo film festivals and received three nominations and a BIFA Award (UK’s leading award for independent cinema).

Other films in this program are: Compulsus from Canada and directed by Tara Thorne, We Don't Dance for Nothing by Stefanos Tai, the Australian film Lonesome by Craig Boreham, and Girlfriends and Girlfriends by Spanish director Zaida Carmona.

Documentaries are yet to be added to the program, but already the festival team recommends to look out for the Canadian film Framing Agnes directed by Chase Joynt, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and received several awards, including the Audience Award (NEXT); the Teddy winner of the Berlin International Film Festival 2021 — Miguel's War by Eliane Raheb, the Brazilian film God Has AIDS by Fabio Leal and Gustavo Vinagre, Into My Name by Italian director Niccolo Bassetti — a participant in more than fifteen festivals, including Berlinale 2022, Eva Vitia's Loving Highsmith and Swedish film by Tove Pils Labor — participant in the Gothenburg Film Festival and CPH:DOX in Copenhagen, and Best LGBTQ+ Documentary at the Lovers Film Festival in Turin (2023).

The team of SUNNY BUNNY also presents the visuals of the festival, developed by the digital agency Hexagon.

The focus of the identity and brand campaign are visibility and equality. It's about consolidating the LGBTQIA+ community in society and reminding that these people are around, fighting, and have the right to protection and fair treatment by institutions and society. The festival also talks about reducing the distance and notes that SUNNY BUNNY is open to all people in solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community.

The logo of the festival was a simplified sign with the mascot of the Sunny Bunny program by artist Anatoly Belov, which was its main symbol for more than 10 years. Since the bunny already has a history, the idea wasn't to erase it by radically changing the logo, but to continue it.

The creators of the identity from digital agency Hexagon talk about how they worked on the logo:

"In the new logo, we added a couple to the mascot because the festival was created against the backdrop of defending the law on civil partnerships for LGBTQIA+ people. On a lyrical level, the couple for the bunny is about ‘stepping out of the shadows' and equality, not binarity."

The festival team would like to thank the digital agency Hexagon and Maksym Tkachenko, Taras Fedorenko, Dana Moshchenko and Vita Badzhane.

Soon the team of SUNNY BUNNY will announce the full program, announce the partners of this year's film festival and share the details of the industry section.

Full program is HERE.