Oleg & the Architecture School

If Ukraine were to have a grand master architect, renowned on the world stage, that person would be Oleg Drosdov. However, in reality, Oleg is little known for his vanguard approach to architecture, nor for his provocative stance in placing Ukraine's most progressive architecture school just 20km from the Russian border in Kharkiv in 2018 – on the 'cultural frontline', as Oleg calls it.

2 weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kharkiv School of Architecture received a remarkable message to prepare and sent its students home. When war broke out, the faculty staff then quickly decided to stay in Ukraine and to continue educating their students – and they relocated the school 1050km across Ukraine to Lviv. 6 weeks later, the school was open again and this short film follows the staff and 4 of the students in their new life in Lviv.

  • Paul Thomas
    Director
  • Steve Cole
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    18 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    January 31, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United Kingdom
  • Country of Filming:
    Ukraine
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.35:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
Director Biography - Paul Thomas

Paul Thomas is a Grieson Nominated, multi-award winning director – best known for American: The Bill Hicks Story. After training as an architect, Paul worked in live television before moving to the BBC Comedy dept–working with Sacha Baron Cohen, Katherine Tate, Leigh Francis, and then moving via factual entertainment into longer form factual work. Producer-director of AMERICAN: The Bill Hicks Story, the UK's 2nd highest grossing theatrical documentary in 2010 – Grierson nominated in 2011. Previous work includes Shadows of Sofia, 2018, AMERICAN: The Bill Hicks Story, 2010, Winner: Dallas Film Festival, LA Film Festival, Nomination: Grierson 2011 Prince William Uncovered, 2003 Big Brother's Little Wedding, 2003 Series Director–C4 Animation Season, 2000, 2001. The Architecture Show, Discovery 1998.

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Director Statement

I originally trained as an architect before moving to a career in television entertainment & comedy, and then documentaries. In the early 2000s, I produced & directed a series for Discovery about modern architecture in the UK, and have maintained my interest ever since.

Shortly after the war broke out in Ukraine, the architect Norman Foster announced that an international team of architects would help rebuild Ukraine, and my first thought was, 'But what about Ukraine's own architects? Who are they? And what will their place be in this?'

So I began to research, and I quickly found an impressive & diverse profession of smart-thinking modern creatives, pulling off astounding and beautiful modern projects on what I knew would be far smaller budgets than in the West. Several of these architects were already hard at work on ideas for reconstruction projects and so I began to contact them and travelled to Kyiv in July 2022 to do the first interviews.

I had also previously worked for 2 years on a feature documentary in Bulgaria, uncovering corruption within the Bulgarian Government (Shadows of Sofia - on Amazon) and so I was also familiar with Russia's manipulative grip on the former soviet states and had a strong sense of the issues beneath the surface that Ukraine would be dealing with.

I then returned to Ukraine in Nov 22 and Jan 23, and am due to return again mid-April.

My producer friend Steve Cole had also filmed in Kyiv in 2012 and has PD'd many arts programmes and was following developments closely when I invited him to come on board as co-producer, in an editorial role and an ever-useful second pair of eyes.