Based in Kyiv, filmmaker and writer Oleksiy Radynski has lived through conflict in Ukraine and studied the fall and aftermath of the Soviet Union. His work experiments with documentary forms and practices of political cinema.

Radynski’s films have been seen worldwide including at international film festivals, winning the Grand Prix at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival for his film Chornobyl 22.

In 2022, he responded to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by re-contextualising the decommissioned statue of Friedrich Engels that stands in the centre of Manchester (co-commissioned by Manchester International Festival and HOME for MIF17).

Our talk series, Artists in Times of Upheaval series, provides artists the opportunity to speak about their experience of working against a backdrop of a world in flux.