On October 27, the premiere of Volodymyr Mula's documentary "Football Nation" took place in Ukrainian cinemas. Mykola Vasylkov, a well-known journalist and ex-advisor of Andriy Shevchenko in the national team of Ukraine, acted as the screenwriter.
The tape tells about the birth, history of formation and development of the National Football Team of Ukraine in the period from 1992 to 2021.
And although the release states that the film is a documentary, a significant part of it is the fictional story of real characters - a young football player and his parents. As experts helpfully noted, the genre of the film is a docudrama.
"The most difficult thing in the filming of the film was to integrate the documentary story with the fiction story," said director Volodymyr Mula.
Ukrainian football players and coaches of different generations, who wrote the history of the national team, became the heroes of the documentary part.
"This is a film about something that unites the Ukrainian people very well - about football. This game unites the nation very much. Perhaps someone will say that this is too pathetic, but what kind of football nation are we? But really, football is something that unites us very much. The film shows how our football has changed along with the nation itself," added the director.
One of the highlights of the film is the Ukrainian language, which our ancestors used to communicate in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
"The idea of such a language belongs to screenwriter Mykola Vasylkov, and the editor was the famous linguist Viktor Kabak, with whom we have been cooperating for a long time," said Mula.