Anton Ptushkin’s film «We, Our Pets and the War» earned UAH 2.3 million in its first weekend at the national box office and became an absolute record holder among documentaries. About the opening weekend said Veronika Yasinska, CEO of the distribution company Green Light Films, tells Ukrainian Forbes.
«We, Our Pets and the War» — is the debut feature film by Anton Ptushkin, a well-known Ukrainian travel blogger from Luhansk who has turned his travel video blog into a war report since the beginning of the war. His film shows the great war in Ukraine through the prism of animal life — many stories about rescuing pets from locked apartments, evacuating from areas under Russian shelling, humanity and support. The filming started on August 20, 2022, and in a year and a half, Ptushkin conducted about 60 interviews in more than 10 cities in Ukraine, including Bakhmut shortly before the occupation, and three international shootings in Spain, the Netherlands, and Poland. In total, he shot about 85 hours of video for the final 85-minute version of the film.
In fact, «We, Our Pets and the War» set several records at the national box office, including one-day box office: On April 4, the film showed the largest box office in the documentary film niche — UAH 359,000.
During the first weekend of its release in Ukraine (April 4-7), the film was watched by about 13,440 viewers, and its box office receipts, as mentioned above, amounted to UAH 2.3 million, which is a record for a documentary. For comparison, the highest-grossing Ukrainian documentary «20 days in Mariupol» took 16 weekends to collect UAH 2.1 million and almost 17,000 viewers. As of the beginning of April 2024, the box office of the acclaimed film by Mstislav Chernov and award winner «Oscar-2024» amounted to UAH 8.7 million.
According to the CEO of Green Light Films, the film «We, Our Pets and the War» was shown in 142 cinemas on 174 screens. Every day, Ukrainian cinemas showed about 240 screenings of the film. In total, there are about 190 cinemas in Ukraine.
The film is also the first case of a documentary co-production between Ukraine and Canada (Yap Films). The budget of «We, Our Pets and the War» is hundreds of thousands of dollars (the team does not disclose the exact amount). The budget of the Ukrainian version is up to $100,000 — this includes the net cost of adapting the local version of the film and the cost of distribution (excluding advertising and marketing costs). The digital premiere is expected this summer – Megogo was the first VOD platform to buy the rights to the film.
The international version with a greater focus on animals is called Saving the Animals of Ukraine. Previously, the rights to it were acquired by the largest American broadcaster PBS for the Nature program, which is known in Ukraine for the same «20 days in Mariupol» by Mstislav Chernov produced by PBS Frontline, and the Canadian TV channel CBC. In a conversation with Ukrainian Forbes, producer Zoya Soshenko saidThe team says that thanks to sales and co-production benefits from Canada, the film’s budget has almost been covered, and the sale of rights to other countries will be profitable. The team is primarily targeting Europe, especially France, Italy, Poland and Germany, where there are many Ukrainians.