Original title: Ia pam'yatnyk sobi
Copyright:  New Kyiv Production
Format: documentary narrative
Carrier: DVD
Color: yes
Length: 59 min.
Original language: Ukrainian
English subtitles: yes

Film crew
Director, camera, and editor: Dmytro Tiazhlov
Producer: Ella Shtyka
Sound: Vladyslav Sirenko
Produced by New Kyiv Production in cooperation with the Dragon Forum

Synopsis
The feature documentary is about Mr. Evhen Khvatov, an eccentric seventy-six year old man who, since his childhood, has been fascinated by graves, tombstones, and monuments. In his adulthood, Mr. Khvatov dedicated himself to restoring them and has rescued from oblivion more than a hundred. They include tombstones on graves of his villagers, simple peasants, of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army soldiers (the UPA), Red Army soldiers, Jews, killed by the Nazis, and the German army officers. As he does this he attracts his attention of his villagers and a larger society to issues of collective memory, forgiveness, and historical reconciliation, an agonizingly complex process Ukraine has been undergoing since independence. Without justifying such criminal ideologies as Communism and Nazism, he advocates forgiveness and empathy across ideological, religious, and ethnic divides.

Director Dmytro Tiazhlov was born in the central Ukrainian city of Dniprodzerzhynsk in 1976. He graduated from the Ivan Karpenko-Kary University for Theater, Film, and TV. For ten years, he worked as cameraman for Ukrainian Television channels (chief cameraman for the Pilot Production Studio, and shot  feature, documentary and animated films). Later he switched to directing his own films, appearing at once as director, cameraman, and editor in them. His authorial works are made in the direct filming tradition. They are based on lengthy observation of everyday life, non-interference in the events, and their minimal interpretation. His films include: Austerlitz, 2005-1805 (2006), Capitals of the World (2007), Important Man (2007), Heavy  (2007), I'm a Monument to Myself  (2009), My Mum is a Dolphin (2010), Via Mobile Tour (2010), The Music Box (2013), and Cornered (2013).