The Earth Is Blue as an Orange

"Intimate and surprisingly playful"

Screen Daily
  • Archive - Festival 36
  • Director: Iryna Tsilyk
  • Ukraine, Lithuania 2020
  • 74 minutes
  • Russian, Ukrainian
  • Subtitles in Hebrew

Single mother Anna and her four children live in the front-line war zone of Donbas, Ukraine. While the outside world is made up of bombings and chaos, the family is managing to keep their home as a safe haven, full of peace and light. Every member of the family has a passion for cinema, motivating them to shoot a film inspired by their own life during a time of war.

Winner of the Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Festival, The Earth Is Blue as an Orange borrows its title from a poem by the poet Paul Eluard. The intimate and striking documentary is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of cinema.

Feature-Length Debut


  • Director Iryna Tsilyk
  • Production Anna Kapustina, Giedrė Žickytė
  • Script Iryna Tsilyk
  • Cinematography Viacheslav Tsvietkov
  • Editing Ivan Bannikov, Iryna Tsilyk
  • Festivals Sundance (Best Documentary Director), Berlin
  • Source CAT&Docs, Paris