Synopsis

My story starts with a sunrise in June 2010 on a hill in the south of Moldova, the town of Bessarabca bordering Ukraine where I, together with my classmates and our beloved teacher, are following a local tradition – greeting the sunrise of our adult life after the graduation party. A decade later I am tracking down my classmates, to discover the trajectory of their lives since this very innocent day. My plan is to invite them to our class reunion at the very same hill in Bessarabca to discover how our town shaped their hopes and dreams. By using a mix of personal archives, observational footage and input from the community, this documentary explores memories and transformation of a generation raised in an ordinary town which has never been shown in a film before. It’s a study of a generation and a country that had big dreams just like us.

Biography

Award-winning documentary filmmaker from Moldova with 8-years experience in journalism and human rights, Marina studied documentary filmmaking at the University College London on a Chevening Scholarship. Her graduation project, “Last Chance for Justice”, was commissioned by the BBC World News and won numerous awards, as the Special Mention at One World Prague. Her latest short doc “Postcard for my Grandma“ premiered at the Female Freedom Film Festival in 2022 in Berlin and Chernivtsi. Coming from an ethnic minority background from the town of Bessarabca, Marina is passionate about stories that diminish divisions between “us” and “them” and create solidarity.