28/06/2023
Cinema for Peace Award for The Pope, President Zelenskyy, and Filmmaker Afineevsky.
For contributions to the freedom of Ukraine and humanitarian efforts to protect civilians and children / dedicated to the children who lost their lives in the war in Ukraine
VATICAN CITY / ROME — Cinema for Peace hosted a special honouring of His Holiness Pope Francis, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Oscar-nominated filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky at the Vatican and in Rome. This is the first time that two global leaders and one filmmaker were honoured with a joint award and that the awards are dedicated to someone — the children who lost their lives in the war in Ukraine. The three awards have an engraving of pictures of three innocent children who were killed on March 08, 2022, by a missile — Obodzinsky Volodymir (14 years old), Deyneko Nicol (1 year old), and Deyneko Denis (1 year old). The father of these children who lost his entire family to the war, Volodymyr Obidzinskyi, accompanied Cinema for Peace at the honouring and the film screening and mentioned that he now finds solace in believing that his wife and children are protected in heaven. The audience shared the pain with him and were in tears.
The first honoree was Pope Francis, the Vicar of Jesus Christ on Earth. The founder of Cinema for Peace Jaka Bizilj said :
“There has not been a single day, since the full-scale war started last year, in which Pope Francis has not helped victims of the invasion of Ukraine. From going to Russian Embassy by himself on the first day of the full-scale invasion to ask the Ambassador of Russia to help reach Putin and stop this bloodshed, to asking the Russian government to open humanitarian corridors for civilians to be evacuated from the war zones, and sending pediatric ambulances to Ukraine. Acting as a true diplomat of God, His Holiness was, in silence, behind the wild curtain of the war, knocking on the doors of all diplomatic possibilities and helping organize humanitarian corridors from many different places including the city of Mariupol and for the people who had been trapped under the bombs in the catacombs of the Azovsteal plant.”
