The Hetmanenko Family & Friends

Anna Hetmanenko

Anna Hetmanenko was born in the city of Dnepropetrovsk, now Dnipro, on the banks of the Dnipro River in central Ukraine. She graduated from the National Metallurgical Academy of Ukraine in 2006 in the Economics Department, with a specialty in accounting and auditing. She is the financial director in a leasing firm in Dnipro. “Before the war, 90% of the inhabitants of the city were Russian-speaking (mostly out of habit), but everyone knows the Ukrainian language, they use it in business correspondence, at work, in all educational institutions,” she says. At present she is in temporary residence on the island of Crete in Greece, and continues to work in Ukraine via the Internet.

Nataliia Bratus

Nataliia Bratus graduated in 1982 with a degree in metallurgical engineering in her hometown of Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnipro), Ukraine, the Soviet Union. She worked as a defectoscopist engineer for 10 years before becoming a private entrepreneur after Ukraine declared independence. She escaped the war in Ukraine with her daughter, grandson, and two family pets in March 2022, and immediately began working with John Freedman on translations of Ukrainian dramatic texts for Freedman's Worldwide Ukrainian Play Readings.

Vlad Hetmanenko

Vlad Hetmanenko was born in Dnipro in 2008. He is an accomplished chess player and footballer. He currently attends two schools simultaneously: 9th grade in person in Greece, and 8th grade online in Ukraine. Aside from chess and football, his hobbies include tae kwon-do, and studying English and Greek.

Vadim Hetmanenko

Vadim Hetmanenko, Anna's husband, Vlad's father and Nataliia's son-in-law, was born in the small city of Pershotravensk near Dnipro, and graduated in 2003 from the Dnipro Polytechnic National Technical University with a speciality of management of foreign economic activity. He is employed as a procurement manager by a Dnipro-based construction company, but is currently in active duty in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Kora

Kora is a purebred German Shepherd. Aged three and a half at the time of filming in summer 2022, she was, and still is, in the prime of her life. Since reaching Chania, Crete, with her family, she has proudly garnered much attention among dog-walkers and watchers on the embankments along the Sea of Crete in Koum Kapi, Old Town, Nea Chora, Halepa, and other locations on the island.

Gleb Kureichik

Gleb has his own refugee story. He was threatened in his school in Minsk, Belarus, because of the activities of his father Andrei Kureichik, a writer who was forced out of his homeland in September 2020. Gleb's grandfather helped the young man join his father in involuntary exile in late 2020, and Gleb and Andrei have travelled the world together ever since. Gleb's film career began in his childhood. He has acted in five films.

Marita Muukkonen & Ivor Stodolsky

Marita and Ivor are the founders of Artists at Risk, an organization that provides shelter and support to creative individuals whose lives and livelihoods are threatened in their homeland. They were with the Escape film crew on the main day of shooting in the summer of 2022, and they are welcome episodic players in the activities taking place around Anna Hetmanenko as she tells her tale.