Oksana Mysina
Director
Oksana Mysina is a filmmaker based on the island of Crete in Greece. In tandem with her husband John Freedman she is a co-founder of the independent and experimental Free Flight Films studio.
Mysina's most recent film is the film short Cherry Orchard. War. A Poetic Parable, based on snippets of plays by Anton Chekhov (primarily The Cherry Orchard), and documentary interviews with film and theater artists displaced by revolution in Belarus, and Russia's war against Ukraine. The Cherry Orchard. War project is a big one that will take on various lives in the future, including more shorts, and a full-length feature film. Mysina's previous film was the real-life anti-war short, Escape, which tells the story of a refugee family escaping to Europe at the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Winner of 14 awards in its first year of life, Escape was named Grand Prix winner at the Atlantis International Internet Short Film Festival (New York); Best Emotional Film at the Goldspire International Film Festival (Paris); Most Impactful Film, and Best International Film over 15 Minutes at NewsFest in Santa Monica, CA, and was awarded the top Red Cross award at the Flowers Against Bullets festival (Vienna).
Mysina debuted as a film director in 2020 with the full-length political film Insulted Belarus. Based on a screenplay by famed Belarusian activist and writer/producer Andrei Kureichik, it premiered on the TV Rain channel. Insulted was named Best Experimental Film at the Art Film Awards (Skopje). Mysina followed in 2021 with two film shorts, Ivan Petrovich (at the Goldspire International Film Festival, Paris), and Red, Blue, and Asya, both of which have enjoyed active lives on the festival circuit. Red, Blue, and Asya has garnered some 20 awards at various international festivals, including an Award of Recognition at the Best Shorts Competition in San Diego; Best Female Director and Zero Budget Film at the Iconic Images Film Festival (Vilnius); and Best Director at the Silver Mask Live Festival (Los Angeles). Also in 2021 she created her second full-length political film, Voices of the New Belarus, based on another Andrei Kureichik screenplay. In 2022 she created a short version of Voices under the title of Love is Stronger than Fear. Mysina is currently working on an international film, A Woman and her Angel, a feature film predominantly with Greek actors. She edits her own films, and is her own post-production team.
In her award-winning film acting career, Oksana's work has been seen at festivals and in cinemas throughout the world. Her work in theater has toured to over 20 countries on four continents.
OKSANA MYSINA ON HER LIFELONG ATTACHMENT TO THE CHERRY ORCHARD
When I read Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in my early youth, I remember saying to myself, “He wrote this play for me.”
The mysterious story of the mysterious Ranevskaya – her first name Lyubov means “love” in Russian – is no more mysterious than my own journey has been in regards to this play.
At first I was to play Ranevskaya at the Moscow Art Theater, but during the night prior to our first rehearsal, the legendary actor and director Oleg Yefremov, who had “seen” his Ranevskaya in me, fell in his apartment and broke his collarbone. He was already seriously ill and he died a month later.
Subsequently I rehearsed Ranevskaya at the Chekhov Museum in Moscow. I brought costumes for everyone from the United States, and, I sat in my seat in the airplane with four hats purchased in a second-hand store resting one on top of the other on my head. The uppermost one, decorated with snow-white feathers, was unbelievably beautiful.
By this time I was frequently speaking at political rallies against the war in Ukraine, where I was born and had grown up. The day before our Cherry Orchard was to premiere, the museum was shut down to prepare a new exhibit dedicated to Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Russia’s most famous satirical writer. We were informed there would be no premiere!
Thus began a wending journey filled with doors slamming shut before me. This was, in essence, a declaration that I had been banned from my profession as an actor.
My husband John Freedman and I ended up leaving Russia in order to live freely in Greece.
The Cherry Orchard has been alive inside of me for as long as I can remember. I never actually studied its text. It has just lived inside of me, almost independently of me, on its own. And now, in times of full-scale war, it has emerged from me in the form of this film.
Eventually, this film will consist of three novellas. Further filming is still underway in Ukraine, Israel and Greece. I am releasing this first novella as a stand-alone film short.
I believe this lively, timely material must be seen and heard right now at a time when all of us, all of mankind, are battling with unanswerable questions. When will discord end? When will we cease trying to even scores? When will we put a stop to war and the suffering of people?
Close friends and colleagues joined me in this experimental journey with enthusiasm and inspiration, and I am endlessly grateful to them. Each one of them is a full-fledged co-author of this unusual cinematic work, filmed in the genre of a poetic parable, a parable of a time of war.