Audio Series About War in Ukraine to Be Released in Finland
On 24 April, Finnish broadcaster Yle will release a multi-part fiction audio drama ‘Countdown’, which is set at the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The Gaze reports on this with reference to Yle.
The 10-episode audio series tells about the war through the eyes of Nora, a Finnish international journalist who went to work in the war zone. Hiding from her own life difficulties, she goes to work in the war zone in eastern Ukraine.
Nora's journalistic mission is interrupted by the news that her first love, Petteri, has lost contact with the surrogate mother who is carrying his child. In the end, the search for the unborn baby becomes even more important to the heroine than her job.
The story, which shows a Finnish perspective on the war in Ukraine, was created by Finnish screenwriter Hanna Leivonimi, who, like the protagonist, worked as a journalist and visited hot spots. While writing the story, Hanna consulted with Ukrainian refugees and fellow journalists who had reported from Ukraine.
To make the Ukrainians' lines more realistic, she invited Ukrainian-speaking dubbing actors, including both amateur and professional actors, to record the story. A total of 22 Ukrainians took part in the recording. Four of them dubbed the leading roles, and another 18 took part in the recording of episodic characters.
The main roles were voiced in Ukrainian by Ruslan Hunko, an amateur actor, and Yuliana Voronina, an actress from the Ukrainian Theatre of Finland. Together with the Finnish team, they spent about a month at Yle studios.
‘The Finnish team did a great job of making the story more understandable in the Ukrainian context. I was impressed by how much the team wanted to show everything realistically, they were very interested in details,’ said Hunko, who dubbed the role of one of the main characters in the audio drama, Kyrylo.
The main language is Finnish, but the characters also speak Ukrainian and English. The project team said that they are considering creating a visual version with subtitles for foreign language listeners.
The slogan of this story is the phrase: ‘Hope is born in the midst of Ukraine's war’.
As The Gaze reported earlier, Ukrainian cinema continues to assert its growing international presence, taking a prominent place at this year's goEast Film Festival in Wiesbaden. From 23 to 29 April, Ukrainian filmmakers will present five compelling films, two of which were supported by the Ukrainian State Film Agency. These works explore Ukraine's complex history, contemporary society, and rich cultural identity, reaffirming the country's role as a vital contributor to Central and Eastern European cinema.