The film “Oxana” paints a portrait of the woman and the artist at the origin of the Femen

Rectangle Productions 247 – Films Hero Squared – France 3 cinema

Albina Korzh plays Oksana Chatchko in “Oxana”.

Cinema – Flower crowns on the head, Grain of beauty on the cheek, naked breasts and raised fists: Oksana Chatchko had made her body her weapon. The Ukrainian co-creator of the Femen died at 31 years on July 23, 2018 in France, where she was a political refugee. Seven years later, director Charlène Favier pays tribute to her in Oxanaat the cinema this Wednesday, April 16.

The film paints the portrait of the artist and the woman behind the activist. Because if the Femen movement created in 2008 survives it, it is in painting that Ksana Chatchko had devoted its last years after having moved away from Femen in 2014. His mantra “Art is the revolution” serves as a common thread for the film, as it was in his life.

Oxana highlights the little known talent of Oksana Chatchko for religious, then blasphemous icons. Charlène Favier also wanted to rally the form at the bottom: “With this film, I wanted to recreate a painting, so that Kesana returned to this place at the center of the work they inspired”she explains to HuffPost. In front of her camera, the young Ukrainian actress Albina Korzh is bewitching in this role in turn mystical, sensual or enraged.

Portrait of a young woman

The scenario required two and a half years of research and meetings with the relatives of Oksana Chatchko. There was his mother, her great friend in Paris the artist Apolonia Sokol, several of his “Many lovers”his teachers and comrades of the Fine Arts, as well as Alain Margot, director of the documentary I’m femen. “It was quite hard to meet all these people, because I started in 2021 shortly after his suicide”recalls the director.

Oxana is sometimes contemplative, as an internal dialogue between the young woman and the spectator. Rather than chronological narration, Charlène Favier chose to go back and forth between July 23, 2018 and the memories of the past. This last day of wandering in Paris was invented, even if “These are things that she was able to live at some point” According to the director: we follow Oxana at the swimming pool, in her workshop in the Beaux-Arts, at a his lovers, even in her workshop and her small apartment.

The woman behind the femen

Even if she is hesitant with the term “biopic”, “Everything is in the film starts from reality, documented things” confirms Charlène Favier. Some scenes come from famous press photos or feme members’ members, such as the violent kidnapping of Oksana Chatchko and two friends by the Belarusian KGB.

“Obviously, we always take liberties but I wanted to remain very faithful to what it was. When we make a film to pay tribute to someone, we are responsible for telling the truth ”the filmmaker tells us.

His dispute with Inna Chevtchenko, a highly publicized activist for having founded Femen France, who has become international, is discussed but in the background. “I didn’t want to make a film on betrayal, it was more important to show your soul, your personality, your visceral need to campaign “Explains Charlène Favier.

Rectangle Productions 247 – Films Hero Squared – France 3 cinema

“Oxana” recalls the fight of the first Femen, at the risk of their lives, before the movement exported to the international.

The filmmaker also recalls the difficulties that the young woman had to face her arrival in France, where she lived in great precariousness and only obtained asylum after years after having taken refuge. “Oksana was very touched by not being raw”says the director, who believes that the first femen were misunderstood. “We did not realize that at that time in Ukraine, it was not at all the same living conditions. It was not a secular country, it was the supermarket of European prostitution, everyone was going to do dirty things to the girls ”she recalls.

A filming in the middle of the war in Ukraine

Charlène Favier had planned to shoot part of her film in Ukraine. The invasion by Russia in February 2022, and the war which has been continuing there since, disrupted its plans. “We had to recreate Ukraine in Hungary and all the castings were zoomed for 3 years, it was long”regrets the director.

But the news also finds an echo in his film: the Ukrainian actresses ofOxana All live in kyiv and refuse to leave their city. Like the women they embody, “They are resistants and real fighters”believes Charlène Favier. War brought them the emotions they had to play on the screen: “When they arrived in France, they were in the same state as the characters arriving in Paris: full of trauma, violence and anxiety. It was a strong emotional catalyst for them and it feels in the film ”says the director. And add: “They told me that the women who go to the front in Ukraine are the new femen”.

Oksana Chatchko’s warnings were unfortunately achieved. “In the film, Oxana says that Putin was still there, that he will come back, that Western Europeans are not careful”describes Charlène Favier, “And the film comes out when it happens what it had predicted, it’s super powerful”. Oksana Chatchko is no longer there to testify.

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