Oleh Sentsov starts pre-production on Kai for 2027 Ukraine shoot
Ukrainian director Oleh Sentsov has begun pre-production on Kai, his first fiction feature in five years since the 2021 drama Rhino, with filming scheduled in Ukraine in the first half of 2027, according to Deadline. Pre-production is the planning stage before cameras roll. Casting, locations, crew and budget are fixed now to allow a shoot next year.
Sentsov has served in the Ukrainian armed forces since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. He recorded the footage for his 2024 documentary Real while serving as a junior lieutenant during Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive. The result is a long break from staged drama.
Kai turns to an earlier period. It is set against Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014 and the early years of the Russian-Ukrainian War, when Russia occupied Crimea. Writer and director Maryna Stepanska has joined the project as co-writer.
The film is produced by Denis Ivanov and Sentsov through Ukraine's Arthouse Traffic and Cry Cinema. France's Playtime is a co-producer and is handling international sales, the business of licensing distribution rights to distributors in each country. The wider team brings together producers from Ukraine, Poland, Germany, France and the Czech Republic. That kind of co-production, where companies in different countries pool money and share responsibilities, is common for films made in Europe.
Support so far includes the European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian Films, Ukraine's Ministry of Culture and the Polish Film Institute. Kai was presented to potential partners at the Les Arcs Film Festival's Co-Production Village in 2022. That section functions as a market for unfinished projects seeking finance. Ivanov and Sentsov previously collaborated on Rhino, a crime drama set in the 1990s, as noted by Variety.
Sentsov had also set Shining World as his English-language debut. The plan now is to organise the Kai shoot in regions of Ukraine comparatively less affected by air raid alerts and attacks. Safety and continuity will shape day-to-day decisions on locations and schedules.
What makes this stand out is the practical test. A period story set in 2013 and 2014 must be rebuilt on working streets. Doing that with a five-country team, inside a country at war, requires careful scheduling around alerts and access.
