Cossacks & Devils Film Double - Ukrainian Film Week at FOMO Cinema Tbilisi

HOW THE COSSACKS… brings together three classic Ukrainian animated shorts following the cheerful, resourceful and indestructible Cossack trio created by Volodymyr Dakhno. Fast, wordless, physical and wonderfully direct, these films helped turn the Cossacks into some of the most recognisable figures in Ukrainian animation.

This block includes HOW THE COSSACKS COOKED KULESH, HOW THE COSSACKS PLAYED FOOTBALL, and HOW THE COSSACKS FREE THE BRIDES. Across the three films, the Cossacks cook, compete, travel, outwit enemies and generally create trouble with the confidence of men who believe any problem can be solved with speed, appetite and teamwork.

The style is simple but beautifully effective and very distinctly different than the animations I grew up watching in "The West" in Australia. Dakhno uses exaggerated movement, clear silhouettes and comic rhythm rather than heavy dialogue, which gives the films a wide appeal across language and age. They belong to the golden period of Kyivnaukfilm, when Ukrainian animation developed its own visual personality inside the Soviet studio system.

Screening before EVENINGS ON A FARM NEAR DIKANKA and THE EVE OF IVAN KUPALO, this animation block opens Thursday’s Cossacks and Devils program with the lightest possible touch: folk humour first, Gogol’s devilry after.