Jamala's documentary honored with Gold Dolphin at Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards

The Ukrainian documentary "Jamala. Songs of Freedom" won the Gold Dolphin at the Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards, in the Human Concerns and Social Issues category.

"I'm reading this and I can't believe it... Out of almost 800 applications from 46 countries, the Cannes jury selected this particular film," Jamala posted on Facebook.

The documentary focuses on her work and support for Ukraine at the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion.

"This film is about us... about these three years of losses, pain, suffering, and our desperate fight for freedom," Jamala said.

The singer previously gained international recognition by winning the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest with her song 1944, about the deportation of Crimean Tatars.

Her family, like that of Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, was deported to Central Asia in 1944 by the Soviet authorities on the false accusation that all Crimean Tatars had collaborated with the Nazis.

Up to 200,000 Crimean Tatars – mostly women, children, and the elderly – were deported to Central Asia and Siberia, while Crimean Tatar men who were fighting for the Red Army at the time were sent to labor camps.In the 1980s, Jamala and her family returned to Crimea, where she went on to study in Kyiv.

Opinion: Ukraine’s avant-garde legacy battles against persistent destruction

On a recent trip to Kyiv, I was fortunate enough to join a tour of the city led by Olena Zaretska, the granddaughter of the legendary Ukrainian artist and dissident Alla Horska. Horska was part of a generation of young writers, artists, and intellectuals who challenged the repressive cultural atmosp…

The Kyiv IndependentUilleam Blacker