Events
Japan Prize 2023
The Japan Prize Festival Week
1:30pm – 3:15pm
Award-winners Screenings & Discussions
Outside
(Award of Honor in the Lifelong Learning Division)
A 13-year-old boy, Roma, became a mascot of the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2014 when he was seen running around the streets of Kyiv throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. Roma is now 18 and back on the streets, standing on the threshold of adulthood with only a lighter and knife to call his own. Can he turn his life around before it is too late?
This work was made by the Ukriainian documentary director, Olha Zhurba. She met Roma, who grew up in an orphanage, while investigating the situations of children from broken families.
Roma had only just left the orphanage and was drifting from one crisis to another. Seeing how Roma had no adult to depend on, Zhurba was forced to question her own integrity. Should she carry on filming, or should she give him support?
The discussion touched on such important issues for documentary makers as how to maintain objectivity, and also the media’s responsibilities with regard to safety and well-being of its subjects.
* Excerpts of the films introduced in this session have been further edited and shortened for our web page.
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© Moon Man / Final Cut for Real / Tangerine Tree - L090 Outside
- Moon Man
Final Cut for Real
Tangerine Tree - 58 min 8 sec
- Ukraine/Denmark/Netherlands
- Speaker
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Olha Zhurba
Editor/Director
- Moderator
Simon Kessler
Documentary Filmmaker
France
Simon Kessler is a filmmaker and director of photography based in Paris. He has lived and worked in the United States, Canada and Australia. He has directed a number of documentaries for French and international TV networks such as National Geographic, Disney+, Canal+, TF1. His work focuses on intimate portraits of people, places and institutions in moments of transition, with a strong emphasis on social and environmental issues. In 2020, his award-winning documentary Generation Greta (co-written with Johan Boulanger) was selected as a finalist work for the Japan Prize. When he doesn’t make films, Simon likes cooking vegetarian food, playing ukulele and singing with his daughter.
- Panelist
Tiina Klemettilä
Executive Producer, YLE Sports and Events
Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE)Finland
My love for journalism, audience and new ideas has made me a heptathlon journalist during my career. I have worked as a reporter, presenter, producer and executive producer in radio, tv-broadcasting, online and social media. Some might also call this just being curious about everything and restless!
My special passion is big multi-platform campaigns in public broadcasting, aiming to activate, educate and empower the audience.
In my present post my targets are to react quickly to the audience’s needs, create strong interaction with the audience and create moments of togetherness. The content can be celebrating, learning or working to a common goal, but the reason for doing it is always the audience.
- Panelist
Uchiyama Taku
Producer, News and Current Affairs
NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation)Japan
Assigned to Okinawa after joining NHK in 2001, Uchiyama produced documentaries describing the horrors of the battlefield in the closing phases of the Second World War. Uchiyama then worked in Fukushima after the nuclear accident, where he produced many investigative news programs examining the effects of radiation exposure. His 2019 documentary, The War Dead Die Twice: War and War Remains, won the Japan Newspaper and Publishers Association Award. Uchiyama now chiefly produces the current affairs program, Today’s Close Up, for which he has also performed post-invasion coverage and program development work in Ukraine.