Bulgarian filmmaker Theodore Ushev, Oscar-nominated in the animated short film category in 2017 for “Blind Vaysha,” is in pre-production on feature film “Light Boxes,” which he will present at the Venice Production Bridge’s Gap-Financing Market, running Sept. 4-6.
Set in a war-torn Ukrainian town, the story follows Anna, a 13-year-old girl who, despite restrictions imposed by Russian occupying forces, ventures into a ruined library and rescues a burning book titled “Light Boxes.”
Seeking refuge from constant bombardment, Anna discovers Bianca, her imaginary double, living in a fantastical town imprisoned by a war of its own. There, the tyrannical February has condemned its inhabitants to eternal winter and forbids them from flying, while a masked resistance movement known as The Solution fights to restore light and freedom.
With neither reality nor imagination offering an escape from tyranny, the film asks whether hope, memory and love can persevere when war threatens to extinguish them all.
For Ushev, survival lies in imitation. “The characters are constantly trying to reproduce what they have lost to convince themselves it can somehow return,” he tells Variety. “That is what I find fascinating about every totalitarian regime – no matter how oppressed people become, they will always find ways to recreate what has been taken from them, to keep hope alive.”
Visually, “Light Boxes” will distinguish its two worlds through different media: Anna’s reality will unfold in live action with a predominantly Ukrainian cast, while Bianca’s world will be rendered in stop-motion using puppets designed and crafted by Ushev. “Bianca’s world will be the main one,” he explains. “For me, the puppet animation is at the heart of the film.”
That symbolism extends to February’s ban on flight, which Ushev sees as stripping people of their capacity to dream. “When you fly, you dream,” he says. “And the first thing every tyrant does is take away people’s dreams – their hope that things can change.”
The film acts as a reminder that preserving the light requires more than hoping it will endure. “The present is crucial to what happens in our future,” he says. “If we don’t act now and change things, then the future will also exist in the dark.”
