My Father is my Mother’s Brother / Tato — mamyn brat

This documentary film centers on the well-known Kyiv underground artist Anatolii Bielov. Both a singer and painter, he finds himself becoming the guardian of his five-year-old niece when his sister’s mental health deteriorates. Unexpectedly, he must balance between bedtime stories and provocative art, children’s games and the wild nightlife. Gradually, caring for his niece becomes the main purpose of his life.

The film’s director, Vadym Ilkov, is known as a cinematographer (his works include Roman Bondarchuk’s Volcano, Mantas Kvedaravičius’s Mariupolis, and Stanislav Bytiutskyi’s Intolerance) and as a documentary filmmaker. His debut film, Alchevsk Waltz, was one of the significant film events in the post-Maidan era of 2014.

My Father is my Mother’s Brother is his feature-length directorial debut. To film it, Vadym Ilkov spent almost two years with the main protagonist and his sister. This allowed him to capture them in various moments of life under different circumstances. Step by step, a completely different Anatolii Bielov is revealed on the screen—a man known only to his close circle—not a public party-goer and artist, but a rather caring and tender person willing to sacrifice his career for the sake of a little girl who gradually begins to see him as a father figure.

The film premiered at one of the most prestigious documentary film festivals, Visions du Réel, where it won an award for the most innovative film in the international competition program. In Ukraine, My Father is my Mother’s Brother was first shown at the Odesa Film Festival, where it won two awards—Best Film and Best Director. Later, Ilkov would go on to create another unprecedented piece for Ukrainian cinema—a concert film RoziIlovi. Live (2019).