The “rough cut” from the title is not meant to imply an incompleteness of our project, explains filmmaker Roman Bondarchuk. It is a metaphor about the state of Ukraine, rather than the state of the film.
In the autumn of 2013, when the Ukrainian government suspended the negotiations surrounding the country’s accession to the EU, sparking the historic protest in Kyiv’s Independence Square which ended with the resignation of pro-Russian President Yanukovych, a number of filmmakers from Ukraine’s younger generation began recording the events up close. The resulting material, shot during the months when Ukraine refused to leave international headlines, contains the ‘ritual’ elements of any popular uprising (e.g. the pulling down of statues, in this case that of Lenin), but also more particular micro-stories or conversations which lend the mass protests personality.. Euromaidan. Routh Cut is a mosaic of personal stories and suggestive images organized into chronological chapters according to theme and filmmaker, which presents a city gradually transforming itself into a war zone. During the protests the word "Maidan" has come to mean the act of public politics itself: the people’s basic human right to think, speak, and protest freely for a better future.
The documentary has been "adopted" in 2015 by the Romanian Center for European Policies.
