Even if the media hype has now decreased significantly, everyone still remembers Fridays for Future. But to Occupy Wall Street? Or Pussy Riot? Or Femen? The latter became known as the young women who protested with bare breasts against sexism, the patriarchy and also Wladimir Putin. The fact that the desired success failed to fail should be a reason, which is why Femen still officially exists, but has taken the path of many protest movements and largely disappeared from the public's awareness.
In this respect, it fits that Charlène Favier in her cinema biography “Oxana – my life for freedom“Although the life of the Femen co-founder Oksana Schadschko describes, but only treated the activities of the group. Instead, Favier shows a young, committed woman who lived full of ambitions, as an artist, but also as a revolutionary-and took her life at the end of” Oxana “at the end of” Oxana “.
The women of Femen quickly become global media sensation with their protest actions.
July 23, 2018 has what it takes to become one of the most beautiful days in the life of Oksana Schadschko (Albina Korzh): In the evening she has her first big vernissage – and also in Paris. Even as a child, she painted icons in her Ukrainian homeland, at that time still classically religious. In the meantime, she and her art have developed: she paints icons with radical, modern sprinkles, but also her nature has changed.
Oksana and her friends protested as adolescents with verve, anger and originality against the patriarchy. They only put politicians who benefited from rampant prostitution in one of the poorest countries in Europe and finally founded the feminist protest movement Femen. However, brutal repression by the police and secret services soon followed first successes and appearances in international media. After all, Oksana and her friends see no other way to go into exile and apply for asylum in France …
Activist world stars overnight
They were popular motifs that were gratefully accepted by newspapers and news programs all over the world: young women who impressed the powerful of the world and take a while in events to expose their upper body described with slogans. For a moment, Femen belongs to the attention of the world public, but that was over quickly. Perhaps it was also the disillusionment about the lack of success that made Oksana Schaachko doubt the meaning of her existence and finally led to her suicide.
However, the motivator of the activist and artist are not really clear, because Charlène Favier relies on loose, impressionist narrative style in her biographical film. July 23, 2018 forms the framework: In the course of the day, at the end of which it will hang up, Oksana can be seen in her new home in Paris, during the final preparations for her vernissage, but above all when meandering through the streets, when pondering, which is repeatedly introduced.
The common protests gave her a stop that she will no longer find in her exile home in Paris.
She grew up in the Ukrainian country, with a single mother who recognized and promoted her artistic talent early on. A fraudulent priest indicates an early aversion to the organized church, but this hint remains as vague as all those who will still follow. At the beginning of the millennium, Ukraine is more or less democratic, but social developments lag behind those of the West, especially from the perspective of women in early 20th. One thing comes to the other, protests begin, femen is founded, repression follows on the foot. The narrative style often seems to be ticked off. What Oksana really drives, what distinguishes it remains in the dark. She lives freely, has changing lovers, but does not find anywhere.
Not even with her fellow campaigners who are increasingly alienating from her. Above all, a woman named Inna (Maryna Koshkina) will soon take over the initiative at Femen and build the sub -group there after her escape to France. There are disagreements in the orientation, which is known from the dispute between the German and the international arm of Fridays for Future, the slowly grown conflict between Greta Thunberg and Luisa Neubauer. “Oxana” shows quite well how an idealistic group gradually loses its ideal, how the apparently necessary professionalization can lead to disputes. At the same time, the film does not really explain why Oksana Schadschko went her special way. She remains an empty space at the end of the film, a mystery. A tragic fate can certainly be called her short life, which does not yet make it a really interesting subject for a biographical film. At least not in the form chosen by Charlène Favier.
Conclusion: Charlène Favier moves with her film “Oxana – My Life for Freedom” between a portrait of Oksana Schachko, one of the co -founders of the feminist protest association Femen, as well as a portrait of the group itself – and ultimately does not really do justice to any of the two aspects.