‘Sniper: The White Raven’ movie about KMA alumnus
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Even though the war still goes on, Ukraine continues to present its history and culture through art. On August 24, 2022, Ukraine’s Independence Day, the movie “Sniper: The White Raven” was released. This movie relays the story of an eccentric physics teacher, who dreams about making this world a better place and protecting its ecology. He realizes this is impossible during the violent and senseless russian invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. The movie’s turning point is when the main character suffers a terrible tragedy, changes his mind about what he previously thought, and decides to restore justice by becoming a first-class sniper who seeks revenge. The final scene in the movie is related to events in 2022.
But this story is not fiction, the prototype of the main character is a Kyiv-Mohyla Academy alumnus, who studied natural sciences and whose name is Mykola Voronin (Voronin is a derivative word of the “voron”, which in Ukrainian means “raven”). He helped to write the screenplay for the movie and that is why the main character has so much in common with the real Mykola Voronin. He was a teacher and the first eco-settler in Donbas. A pacifist before the brutal attack of the russian invasion in 2014, Mykola took a stand for Ukraine and he even became one of the glorious "cyborgs" who defended the Donetsk airport. Mykola’s life is multi-faceted. Not only a defender of Ukraine, he also writes poetry. His book of poetry expressing his impressions and life challenges was published in 2017.
“I used to dream that my life would be like a movie, but I didn't think what genre I wanted. Therefore, if you dream, dream carefully. Today I had the opportunity to watch “Sniper: White Raven” for the first time. I've read the script for it before and even participated in its writing, but it is not possible to see the colors and listen to music in the script. So, when I saw the final result, I was really impressed”, - said Mykola Voronin in one of the presentations of the movie.
