Ukrainian series is preparing for a world premiere on Netflix (video)
The Ukrainian series The First Days will premiere on Netflix on November 1 in Ukraine and a number of European countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Moldova, and the Baltic and Balkan countries.
This is the first time that a Ukrainian project will premiere on Netflix and in several countries simultaneously. In addition, in more than 12 countries, such as Iceland, Australia and France, the film will be shown on national TV channels.
Each episode of The First Days is a feature film inspired by real events, and some characters have real-life prototypes.
Olha and her children are forced to live in the same house with two husbands, one current and one former; Maksym is caught up in the war at work, at the zoo, where he cannot leave; a homeless man living in a car helps the local theater, and a boy named Yegor calms himself by shooting down missiles like evil birds in his imagination; and the Ukrainian pop legend, whose prototype was Andriy Danylko, streams from his apartment in the capital and becomes an inspiration for millions.
“Ukraine is now in the center of the world’s attention, and foreign audiences are interested in learning what is happening to us, not only from the news, but on a deeper level. It is the format of the feature series that allows us to feel our pain and hopes more deeply and to relate to ordinary Ukrainians,” said Anna Eliseeva, the project’s producer.
“The First Days is a collection of six stories by six directors who were united by their idea, which was created by the show’s showrunner Anastasia Lodkina. Ukrainian artists joined the project: Oleksiy Esakov and Tala Prystavatska, who worked on the series Serf; Artem Lytvynenko, the author and director of the series The Sniffer; Valentyn Shpakov, the author of The First Swallows, and Pavlo Ostrikov, the author of You Are Space; and Katia Tsaryk, a music video maker.
The Ukrainian series The First Days has become the largest co-production with other countries since February 2022. At the first stages of the series’ development, FILM.UA Group was joined by TV channels from Sweden (SVT), Norway (NRK) and Finland (YLE) as co-producers. The global distributor is the German company Red Arrow Studios International, with whom this project was developed at the script level.
