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 Red, Blue and Asya

Which Foot Forward?

I consider Red, Blue and Asya my first film, although under my wing I have a full-length film Insulted. Belarus(sia), another short, Ivan Petrovich (now beginning its festival life), and in post-production, two big films I have made with Greek friends and colleagues. All these films are different, in genre and in subject matter. But Red, Blue and Asya is special for me. I worked on it for several years, and it was the place from which I began my cinematic search not for plot, but for something we might call the truthful sincerity of the moment. The film embraces a combination of fiction and documentary. It decidedly is not for those who know for a fact that the right foot goes first, and the left follows it. My actors achieved an incredible degree of naturalness; you cannot find the seam between their own personalities and their on-screen personae. This is more valuable than gold. The film features the splendid Marina Kangelary, Alexei Zuev and their fantastic daughter Asya Zueva. I wish to say once again: Do not expect the plot, like some dung beetle, to drag you into its hole and strangle you. Each viewer, I hope, will see their own history, and will hear their own attitude to the beauty and incomprehensibility of the world. This is our experiment. The music consists of tracks by three different composers, each unique in their own way, Sergei Kuchmenko, Sergei Shchetinin and Dmitry Yershov. Running time is 26 minutes.