Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov has entered pre-production on his new fiction feature, Kai, with principal photography scheduled to take place in Ukraine during the first half of 2027. The project marks Sentsov’s return to fiction filmmaking, five years after Rhino, which premiered in the Orizzonti competition of the Venice Film Festival.

The film, set against the backdrop of the Revolution of Dignity which took place in Ukraine in February 2014 and of the early years of the Russo-Ukrainian War, including the Russian occupation of Crimea, centres on a family undergoing an internal crisis while the country around them experiences profound political and social upheaval.

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“My screenplay draws from my own experiences, including a son with autism, participating in the Maidan protests and evacuating civilians from combat zones. It is not strictly autobiographical, but it is deeply personal. At its heart are family relationships and the choices people make when personal upheaval coincides with historic change,” said Sentsov.

Ukrainian writer-director Marina Stepanska has joined Sentsov as co-writer. Stepanska wrote and directed Falling, which premiered in Karlovy Vary’s East of the West section, and co-wrote Anna Buryachkova’s Forever-Forever, unveiled in Venice’s Orizzonti Extra section.

Shooting is expected to take place in regions of Ukraine less exposed to air-raid alerts and attacks. The Ukrainian crew will include veterans and active military personnel, with the production also intended to provide a route into the film industry for those transitioning back to civilian life.

Sentsov himself has served in the Ukrainian Armed Forces since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022 and currently commands a battalion in the 47th Separate Mechanised Brigade “Magura”. His experiences on the front also resulted in the documentary Real, assembled from footage recorded during combat in 2023.

Kai is produced by Denis Ivanov and Sentsov himself through the Ukrainian outfits Arthouse Traffic and Cry Cinema. The international co-production also involves Dariusz Jabłoński, Violetta Kamińska and Izabela Wójcik of Apple Film Production (Poland), Heino Deckert of ma.ja.de. fiction (Germany), Šárka Cimbalová and Mike Downey of Marlene Film Production (Czech Republic) as well as François Yon and Paul De Beco of Playtime (France). The latter firm is also handling international sales.

“Kai brings Oleh’s work as a film maker much closer to home, drawing very much on his personal experiences in these embattled historically significant times,” says co-producer and former EFA Chair Mike Downey, “Gamer was Oleh’s breakout indie feature about a young video gamer in Crimea, which premiered to high praise at IFFR while Rhino was gritty crime drama exploring Ukraine in the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He followed that with Real, a striking documentary capturing the current front-line trench warfare in real time. After so many years on the front lines, making a movie is a real change of direction.”

The project has received backing from the European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian Films (ESFUF), the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and the Polish Film Institute. Its development was previously supported by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, the Göteborg Film Fund and FILMBOOST. Kai was also presented at the Les Arcs Film Festival’s Co-Production Village in 2022.