“We Have So Many Stories and Not Much Time”: An Interview with Iryna Tsilyk

Masha Shpolberg introduces and interviews Ukrainian filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk. They discuss the overall arc of Tsilyk’s career: her early films, her breakthrough documentary, The Earth Is Blue as an Orange (2020), her first fiction feature, Rock. Paper. Grenade (2022), and her current project—an animated documentary about her own family’s experience of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Tsilyk reflects on what it means to her to be both a writer and a filmmaker, the capabilities of the two mediums, and her growing role as a cultural ambassador for Ukraine. The conversation concludes with reflections on the state of cultural production in Ukraine today and what the postwar future might look like.