Realstars has a tradition of attending the Gothenburg Film Festival where we watch movies related to the theme Fair Sex and its opposites. Ukraine is not a brothel was shown at the Gothenburg Film Festival and is directed by Kitty Green. The documentary shows an inside image of the feminist organisation Femen.
In the movie, we get to meet the girls who protest bare-chested and get an insider’s look at Femen which is not only fighting against the authoritarian regime, the patriarchy and female oppression, but also for its identity. In the documentary, we get to follow several protest actions and get to see how the girls are being treated.
The big revelation in this fascinating documentary is that Femen was efficiently managed by a very charismatic man, Victor Svyatski. This fact as well as the actual goals he states for the organisation in the movie are contradicting what Femen stands for. In the movie, Victor says that he is “The Father of the new feminism” and this together with his other statements from the film result in a very absurd impression of him.
Sadly, some of the girls in Femen admit that they feel psychologically shackled by Victor and would like him to step down from his leading position, but since Ukraine is so strongly governed by men they believe that it would have been hard to establish the organisation without him.
Today, Femen has spread throughout Europe and Victor is no longer part of the organisation.