A new record: Anton Ptushkin's film collected UAH 2.3 million in the first weekend

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Anton Ptushkin's film “We, Our Favorites and War” earned UAH 2.3 million in the first weekend at the national box office. The tape became an absolute record holder among documentary films.

During the first weekend at the box office – from April 4 to 7 – the film collected UAH 2.3 million. Veronika Yasinska, CEO of the distribution company Green Light Films, told “Forbes Ukraine” about this.

Box office

In fact, “We, Our Favorites and War” set several records at the national box office. On April 4, the film showed the largest box office in the documentary niche – 359,000 UAH.

During the first weekend of release in Ukraine (from April 4 to 7), the film was viewed by about 13,440 viewers, and the box office totaled UAH 2.3 million, which is a record for a documentary.

For comparison, the highest-grossing Ukrainian documentary “20 Days in Mariupol” needed 16 weekends to collect 2.1 million UAH and almost 17,000 viewers. As of the beginning of April 2024, the box office of the sensational film by Mstislav Chernov and the winner of the “Oscar-2024” prize was UAH 8.7 million.

According to the general director of Green Light Films, the film “We, our pets and the war” was shown in 142 cinemas on 174 screens. Every day, Ukrainian cinemas showed about 240 screenings of the film. In total, about 190 cinemas have been opened in Ukraine.

This is definitely a successful start of distribution for any, not only documentary film, Yasinska noted.

Creating a film

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The tape is the first case of documentary co-production between Ukraine and Canada (Yap Films). The budget of “We, our pets and the war” is hundreds of thousands of dollars (the exact amount is not disclosed by the team). Only the Ukrainian version is up to $100,000.

The international version with a greater emphasis on animals is called “Saving the Animals of Ukraine”. Previously, the rights to it were acquired by the largest American broadcaster PBS for the program Nature, which is known in Ukraine thanks to the film “20 days in Mariupol” by Mstislav Chernov produced by PBS Frontline, and the Canadian TV channel CBC.

In a conversation with Ukrainian Forbes, producer Zoya Soshenko said that thanks to sales and co-production benefits from Canada, the budget of the film was almost covered, and the sale of rights to other countries would be profitable. The team is primarily targeting Europe, especially France, Italy, Poland and Germany, where there are many Ukrainians.

About the director

“We, our favorites and the war” is the debut feature film of Anton Ptushkin, a famous Ukrainian travel blogger born from Luhansk, who since the beginning of the war turned his own video blog about travel into a report about the war.

His tape shows the great war in Ukraine through the prism of animal life – many stories about rescuing pets from locked apartments, evacuation from territories under Russian shelling, humanity and support.

I did a lot to make this film have a positive vibe, says Ptushkin. – I aimed for the viewer to come out of it in thought, not in tears.

Filming started on August 20, 2022 – in a year and a half, Ptushkin conducted about 60 interviews in more than 10 cities of Ukraine, in particular, in Bakhmut shortly before the occupation, and three international shootings – in Spain, the Netherlands and Poland. In total, during this time, he shot about 85 hours of video for the final version of the film, which is 85 minutes long.