Our work is featured in two documentaries that premiered in this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
For A Rising Fury, we created animations, titles, and credits. It premiered on June 10th.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022 caught the world by surprise and seized our attention, but the war’s roots were laid far earlier. Filmed over eight years, A Rising Fury tracks the evolution of the conflict in Ukraine, from the 2013 Maidan Revolution in Kyiv, Ukraine to today. The documentary intimately accompanies Pavlo, a young idealist who enlists in the Ukrainian army to defend his country following Russia’s invasion of the Donbas and Crimea regions in 2014. In this vicious struggle between two culturally intertwined nations where friends can suddenly become foes, Pavlo finds himself on the opposite side of the battlefield from many he once considered allies as he fervently acts to defend his country’s independence, sovereignty, and democracy.
From expansive, deadly firefights to personal moments of intimacy, Directors Lesya Kalynska and Ruslan Batytskyi drop viewers directly into the front lines of the war with a boots-on-the-ground view, allowing us to bear witness to a bloody and impassioned act of resistance to an invasion that is tearing both country and family apart. —Julien Devlin
For Liquor Store Dreams, we worked on title design for credits and lower thirds. It also premiered on June 10th.
The debut feature of So Yun Um is a moving personal film about immigrant dreams and generational divides. It follows So and her friend Danny, both “liquor store babies,” whose Korean parents made the best of limited opportunities by running liquor stores in Black and Brown communities in Los Angeles. So explores her own dreams of a filmmaking career, a mystery to her bemused but supportive father. Danny returns from a dream job at Nike to help with his mother’s store in LA’s Skid Row, reimagining it as a resource to build bridges between Black and Korean communities. Liquor Store Dreams also places these struggles in the larger context of Korean-Black relations in Los Angeles, including the 1991 murder of Latasha Harlins in a Korean convenience store, the 1992 uprisings sparked by the police brutality against Rodney King and ensuing looting of Korean businesses, and growing political organizing.
So’s appealing, thoughtful voice offers a unique window on a new generation’s efforts to respect their parents’ sacrifices while remaining true to their own aspirations and contributing to a vibrant, evolving community.--Robert C. Winn