{"id":597535,"date":"2026-08-18T23:54:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597535\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T23:54:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:54:09","slug":"briarcliff-acquires-north-american-rights-to-ukraine-doc-ash-and-crayons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597535\/","title":{"rendered":"Briarcliff Acquires North American Rights to Ukraine Doc Ash and Crayons"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAsh and Crayons<\/a>, a powerful documentary from Oscar-nominated documentarian Evgeny Afineevsky<\/a> about Ukrainian children whose lives have been dramatically impacted by the ongoing war in Ukraine, has been acquired by Briarcliff Entertainment<\/a> for a North American theatrical release on Nov. 20 \u2014 World Children\u2019s Day \u2014\u00a0and robust impact and awards campaigns, The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively learned.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfineevsky, a Russian-born Israeli-American who has also made acclaimed docs about everything from the war in Syria (2017\u2019s Cries from Syria) to the late Pope Francis (2020\u2019s Francesco), has been a devoted chronicler of war in Ukraine for over a decade, dating back to 2015\u2019s Winter on Fire: Ukraine\u2019s Fight for Freedom, for which he received his Oscar nomination, and its sequel, 2022\u2019s Freedom on Fire: Ukraine\u2019s Fight for Freedom.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsh and Crayons combines verit\u00e9 footage and animation created by Ukrainian artists to tell the stories of seven Ukrainian children as they exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of unimaginable horrors, from catastrophic injuries to forcible deportations. An early cut of the film was recognized with the prestigious Cinema for Peace Award in Berlin, which was presented to Afineevsky by Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

\n\tBriarcliff is run by veteran film exec Tom Ortenberg (Crash and Spotlight), who tells THR, \u201cAll of us at Briarcliff are proud to be associated with such a strong and affecting film, and we look forward to bringing it to audiences this fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAdds Kevin Goetz, one of the film\u2019s producers, \u201cWe are so thrilled to have partners in Tom and Briarcliff who share our commitment to bringing these powerful and inspiring stories to the world. Evgeny is one of the great documentarians of our time. This is a film about hope and resilience, about seeing beyond the \u2018ash,\u2019 so to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfineevsky himself states, \u201cI am so honored to share the inspirational stories of these incredible children. As they have said to us, \u2018Even broken crayons can color.\u2019 I\u2019m also extremely grateful for the hard work of 100-plus Ukrainian artists and industry professionals inside war-torn Ukraine, support of the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine and the Ukrainian State Film Agency (Derzhikino), as well as the support and expertise of my producers, Kevin Goetz and Galyna Sadomtseva-Nabaranchuk.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ash and Crayons, a powerful documentary from Oscar-nominated documentarian Evgeny Afineevsky about Ukrainian children whose lives have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597536,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[253235,198230,93,253236,61,60,270],"class_list":["post-597535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ash-and-crayons","tag-briarcliff-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-evgeny-afineevsky","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}