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Speaker 1: Good morning, Ben, Good morning you guys joining us. What

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Speaker 1: have you watched? So I've watched this fascinating new Swiss

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Speaker 1: film called Olga and now it was at Kahan in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, and it was made a couple of

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Speaker 1: years before that, right, but it's finally made its way

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Speaker 1: to Australia. It's a brilliant film. It feels like a documentary.

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Speaker 1: It's quite bizarre how they've made this film. So a

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Speaker 1: Swiss director, Ellie Grapper, has made this movie about a

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Speaker 1: Ukrainian gymnast, and actually stars a gymnast who was in

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Speaker 1: the Ukrainian national team, Anastasia Badayshkina. And so she's a

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Speaker 1: real gymnast. And so the probably sequences, sequences of gymnastics

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Speaker 1: in this film just absolutely amazing. And you know, you

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Speaker 1: get a pretty fair sense of I guess how tough

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Speaker 1: it is for elite gymnastics, for elite gymnasts, and how

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Speaker 1: tough it is in their bodies. Yeah, especially in that

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Speaker 1: part of the world. Right. So, and so there's the

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Speaker 1: and she's extremely driven, this young fifteen year old Ukrainian gymnast.

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Speaker 1: Her mum is an investigative journalist in the Ukraine and

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Speaker 1: It's set about, you know, ten years ago, during a

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Speaker 1: time of real political unrest in the Ukraine, which is

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Speaker 1: what makes this film so fascinating to watch now with

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Speaker 1: everything that's happened in the past twelve months with Putin

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Speaker 1: and Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, because back then it

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Speaker 1: was a very different set of circumstances in the politics

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Speaker 1: of Ukraine. The president at the time was secretly behind

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Speaker 1: the scenes and against the will of Parliament, trying to

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Speaker 1: move Ukraine closer to Russia, trying to increase the ties

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Speaker 1: with the Kremlin, which caused widespread protests and basically Ukrainian

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Speaker 1: revolution that toppled this president at the time. And so

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Speaker 1: now you look at it and you go wow, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, the influence of Kremlin and Putin way back

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Speaker 1: then was parent and so it kind of makes it

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Speaker 1: It makes the storyline even more topical right now, I

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Speaker 1: guess than it was when the film was released before

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Speaker 1: Russia invaded. And so this Ukrainian gymnast, her investigative journalist's

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Speaker 1: mum is getting into trouble. They're being persecuted by the

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Speaker 1: Ukrainian government, which is kind of very pro Russian at

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Speaker 1: this point, and so the mom sends the daughter, the gymnast,

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Speaker 1: into exile in Switzerland. She's got a kind of Swiss

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Speaker 1: passport because her dad's Swiss, joins the Swiss national team,

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Speaker 1: and so the story is about how this gymnast kind

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Speaker 1: of is a fish out of water in Switzerland with

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Speaker 1: a whole bunch of new teammates, can't really speak the language.

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Speaker 1: And she's also keeping an eye on these protests that

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Speaker 1: are happening in Ukraine and feeling like she's missing out

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Speaker 1: on being part of this important, important movement, and is

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Speaker 1: worried about her mum, who's in real danger at times

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Speaker 1: as well. But the main thing about this film is

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Speaker 1: the sequences of gymnastics. And there's one scene where this

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Speaker 1: young girl is so driven to succeed. She's trying to

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Speaker 1: perfect this move called a jaeger on the uneven bars,

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Speaker 1: which is kind of where you spin around and you've

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Speaker 1: got a reverse grip and then you flip up in

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Speaker 1: the air and twist and then catch the bar on

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Speaker 1: the way down. Difficult, and the actual gymnast, the actor herself, Anastasia,

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Speaker 1: can do it. She can do it, but she has

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Speaker 1: to pretend that she can't do it, which involves face planting,

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Speaker 1: so like missing the bar entirely and belly flopping on

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Speaker 1: the mat, and she does it over and over again,

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Speaker 1: like in one scene she must do it ten times

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Speaker 1: and the actress actually did it. Man to watch, to watch,

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Speaker 1: And there are other sequences where the gymnasts are trying

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Speaker 1: to learn things and they're deliberately falling for the purposes

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Speaker 1: of the movie, and it is hard to watch. And

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Speaker 1: the very real blisters and very real injuries depicted in

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Speaker 1: this film, it does seem like a documentary. It's so

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Speaker 1: well done. But it's off the radar of most people,

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Speaker 1: This little filmy film made on no money whatsoever. The

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Speaker 1: Swiss entered it as their entry in the Academy Awards,

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Speaker 1: the ninety fourth Academy Awards. But it's extremely good, such

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Speaker 1: a good film, and with all of the Ukraine Russia

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Speaker 1: stuff it's around at the moment you watch it and

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Speaker 1: you just go wow, were that it was made in

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Speaker 1: twenty one and then at least in twenty one that

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Speaker 1: So released in twenty one, I should say, yeah, so

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Speaker 1: made before any of this stuff with Russia and some

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Speaker 1: of the stuff. The way it finishes it kind of

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Speaker 1: feels prophetic. It's like, Wow, they kind of really did

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Speaker 1: predict what the future would hold for Ukraine when it

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Speaker 1: comes to Russia and why they should be afraid of Russia.

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Speaker 1: So it just adds a lot of extra interest to

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Speaker 1: this really really fantastic international film. I'm there, sounds awesome.

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Speaker 1: How many how many are you giving it? I'm going

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Speaker 1: to give this one four stars. All start very very

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Speaker 1: very good. Thank you Ben, Thanks guys,