Latest in Evgeny Afineevsky

EXCLUSIVE: Pope Francis is issuing a renewed plea for peace in Ukraine after attending an extraordinary screening at the Vatican of Evgeny Afineevsky's documentary Freedom on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom. The screening at the New Synod Hall within the walls of the Vatican took place on the…

News clips of the war in Ukraine only go so far in depicting the impact of Russia's brutal invasion, which has killed more than 6,000 civilians and injured almost 10,000 more, according to the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. To experience the reality of the war on a more…

Evgeny Afineevsky released his Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom in 2015, documenting the Euromaidan protests the previous year in the city of Kyiv that led to the collapse of the Russia-aligned Azarov government and the removal and exile of Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych as…

At home in L.A.’s Studio City, filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky carefully unfolds a blue-and-white Ukrainian flag. The once-bright hues are darkened with soot, the fabric frayed at the edges. The banner sustained those battle scars in 2014 as it flew over Maidan Square in Kyiv, in the midst of a revolution to oust a…

As a documentarian Evgeny Afineevsky has spent years immersed in turbulent conflict zones, in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe. His 2015 Oscar-nominated film Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom, put him in the middle of the Ukrainian Revolution. "I witnessed positive things [in Ukraine]–unity in Maidan…

Evgeny Afineevsky called his Pope Francis documentary Francesco a "healing moment" during a Discovery+ panel for the feature film at Deadline's Contenders Documentary. He also said Pope Francis' leadership inspired him during the Covid pandemic. "I think specifically coming out of the pandemic and coming out of a lack…

EXCLUSIVE: A group of 200 refugees and immigrants, some newly arrived from Afghanistan, attended a special Vatican screening of the discovery+ documentary Francesco Monday night, and later met with Pope Francis himself. "When the movie finished he was downstairs waiting for them," Oscar-nominated director Evgeny…

The head of Discovery+ is bullish on high-end nonfiction content. "We’re investing in premium documentaries, a genre that we know our subscribers want more of," Lisa Holme, group SVP of content and commercial strategy for Discovery, said Thursday at the streamer's Winter Press Tour presentation. She added, "That…

Pope Francis is coming to Discovery+ in time for Easter. The subscription streamer said Wednesday that it has acquired Evgeny Afineevsky's documentary Francesco, an exploration of the pope's ministry and moral leadership in a time of surging right-wing populist movements, a worldwide refugee crisis, and the Covid-19…

It's the rare documentary film premiere that triggers worldwide headlines, but that's what has happened with Evgeny Afineevsky's Francesco. The film about Pope Francis debuted at the Rome Film Festival today and first the Catholic press and then secular media picked up on something the pope told Afineevsky in the…

Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Laura Nix was supposed to board a flight to Copenhagen today, en route to the CPH:DOX festival to pitch her latest project. But the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly forced that event to shift online only, one of countless ways the coronavirus emergency is impacting the documentary…

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky logged countless miles to make his latest documentary, Cries from Syria—with the passport stamps to prove it. "[I] was in Jordan… Lebanon and Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah territory," he tells Deadline of the places where he shot material for the film. "I was in all European…