Photo: Heathens / Pohani
Heathens, a new Czech film set for release next week, centres on the play of the same name by Hanna Yablonska. She was a young Ukraine-born playwright who was killed in a suicide bombing at a Moscow airport.
The black and white movie Heathens (Pohani in Czech) opens with young Odessa-born playwright Hanna Yablonska becoming the victim of a terrorist attack at a Moscow airport in 2011. Also known as Anna Yablonskaya, though her real name was Anna Mashutina, she was not yet 30 when she died.
The great majority of the movie is based on her play The Pagans, a chronicle of a non-functioning family. Indeed she had flown to the Russian capital to collect a prize for the screenplay of a film adaptation.
The director of the new Czech film is Olga Dabrowská.
“Considering she died at the age of 29, she was a hugely prolific and well-known writer. She wrote 22 theatre plays that have been performed in many countries: in the United States, in France, in the UK, in Eastern Europe. The Pagans was staged here in Czechia, at the South Bohemian Theatre in České Budějovice, and in Slovakia, at the National Theatre in Bratislava. She was a modern voice in contemporary European theatre.”
The maker of Heathens explains what made Yablonska special as a writer.
See the rest here.
Author: Ian Willoughby