ROSES. Film-Cabaret is a documentary cinéma vérité, following Dakh Daughters – an intellectual freak cabaret band, created by seven actresses under the roof of Kyiv experimental contemporary theater Dakh. The video diary spans almost five years, following Dakh Daughters since their first show, titled ‘Roses’ – after their first popular song ‘Rozy / Donbas’, written long before Donbas region became the war-torn zone of the so called ‘Russian Spring’. ROSES. Film-Cabaret is about being an artist under extreme conditions of the pain and loss, realizing that during the war a natural self-defense would be creation – in terms of the art as well as motherhood. Film presents a special take on the Maidan revolution, as we are following the events through the eyes of the female artists, through women’s eyes. Life is a cabaret for the characters of the film, so ROSES is a film-cabaret, where music hardly stops, pace never slows, and acting becomes something genuinely sincere. We see through Dakh Daughters’ lives only to find out that all what happens behind the curtain is for the sake of being put on the stage.

Learn where to watch here.

Sheltering in their homes in Kyiv and Baryshivka, Ganna from the Dakh Daughters cabaret troupe and rapper Alyona Alyona speak to us about the cultural sector’s role amid the war in Ukraine. The Dakh Daughters’ participation in an upcoming theatre production in France is now hanging in the balance; Ganna tells us why the all-female punk cabaret has always dealt with politics and current events in their performances. And as one of the only rappers to write and perform in her mother tongue, Alyona Alyona explains how her Ukrainian cultural identity has become an important facet of her music.

Globalfest 2019: 5 Best Things We Saw

Will Hermes – Jan 9, 2019

Dakh Daughters
An Instagrammer’s dream, this Ukraine sextet seem to have stomped out of an Edward Gorey cartoon or a Brothers Quay film, with cellos, violin, string bass, flute, accordion, guitar and a drum kit, and members in matching black-and-white leggings, goth tutus, mime-style greasepaint, false eyelashes, rouge, black nail polish, and at least one pair of skull earrings. There were plenty of headset mics to go around; headlamps, too. Oh, yeah, the music: spine-tingling Ukrainian folk harmonizing, French rapping and a reggae jam for good measure. There was a song about a cat with lots of meowing, and a risqué sort of can-can routine. The sound occasional recalled DhakhaBrakha, a previous Globalfest act that also hails from Kyiv. But the music might remind you just as much of Tom Waits or Regina Spektor.