MOUNTAINS AND HEAVEN IN BETWEEN

Synopsis

It’s 2020, and the world is threatened by a pandemic – the new and unknown coronavirus disease. At the same time, the mountain village of Kolochava in Zakarpattia goes on with daily life because people here face difficulties constantly.
Mariia, Tetiana, Anna, and Svitlana are very well-known in the village. They are the four female paramedics working at the only ambulance station in Kolochava. Despite the pandemic, most of the calls in this village are the same old diseases: strokes, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases, pancreatitis, alcohol intoxication, and others. People keep suffering from severe illnesses, which become even more dangerous in hospitals, now overcrowded with COVID-19 patients.
The villagers get born, get married, celebrate… and eventually die. Life is too short to be put on pause. It seems the life cycle in this village will last forever, but will its people be able to survive if the next pandemic is more deadly? Life in the village continues, and the ambulance workers are always ready to come to the rescue.

About the director

Since 2018, Dmytro Hreshko has been studying and making documentaries, as well as working on his first documentary film 66 SCENES OF UZHOROD (2018). In 2019, he completed a week-long course in narrative film directing at the Skalka 2019 film school (Uzhhorod), and a two-month course in documentary filmmaking at CinemaLab (Academy of Visual Arts, Kharkiv) under the mentorship of Liubov Durakova and Alisa Kovalenko. As a result, Hreshko created a documentary film about mountain rescuers and rescued tourists, SNOW LEOPARD OF THE CARPATHIANS (2019), and a documentary short, 72 HOURS (2019). In 2020, he graduated from Indie Lab, a documentary film school in Kyiv, with curators Dmytro Tiazhlov and Ella Shtyka. Continuing to explore the ‘rescue’ theme, he created a documentary short about ambulance workers, SAVE, ME DOCTOR! (2020). Since 2020, Hreshko has been actively organising events for the Transcarpathian Film Commission to develop cinema in Zakarpattia, as well as the Carpathian Mountain IFF (CMIFF) in Uzhhorod. The film MOUNTAINS AND HEAVEN IN BETWEEN (2021) was selected for Docudays. His most recent work KING LEAR: HOW WE LOOKED FOR LOVE DURING THE WAR (2023) was selected at Docudays.