2025 Yorkton Film Festival - Saving the animals of Ukraine wins top honours

-Media Release, YFF

key points from this story:

• Film highlights animal rescues in Ukraine
• Directed by Anton Ptushkin, Ukrainian documentalist
• Shows human-animal bonds in war zones
• Won Best of Festival Golden Sheaf award
• Other winners include Tailor Made, Perfect Soul
• Yorkton Film Festival celebrates 78th anniversary

Saving the Animals of Ukraine - A film about Ukrainians risking their lives wins big at the 2025 Festival! The documentary chronicles the stories of everyday Ukrainian citizens risking their lives to save innocent pets, farm, zoo, and wild animals abandoned in war-torn Ukraine.

Through his lens, director Anton Ptushkin, a Ukrainian radio/TV presenter, travel documentalist, documents the stories of survival, love, and resilience. And despite dire circumstances, these stories carry a hopeful and powerful message. We see tales of compassion that rise above the grim headlines we expect from warzones. Animal and human lives intersect to help each other. Heroic human efforts to save helpless animals are equally met by the ability of animals to protect and inspire humans. This phenomenon has captured the world’s attention, sending a clear message that all lives matter.

The film won the Best of Festival Golden Sheaf award at the Yorkton Film Festival Saturday night. It also won in the Documentary Social/Political, Director Non-Fiction categories. It won a fourth Golden Sheaf for Outstanding Colour Grading, a category now in its second year at the Festival.

The other big winner of the night is director Quan Luong, who won the Kathleen Shannon Award, Multicultural Award and Short Subject Non-Fiction Award for his film Tailor Made. Tailor Made is a documentary about the passion and perseverance of Tam Nguyen, a refugee from Vietnam who came to Canada in the ‘80s as part of the Vietnamese “boat people” and used his masterful tailoring skills to craft a new life for himself and many others.

The Ruth Shaw Best of Saskatchewan award was presented to a music video, Perfect Soul by Spiritbox, a Canadian Heavy Metal Band. Directed by emerging filmmaker Dylan Hryciuk, who has a knack for creating projects that are emotionally captivating and expansive in scope. He spends a lot of time adding meticulous detail into his stories and themes that subconsciously affect audiences and keep their attention while utilizing a more traditional film-oriented style.

The awards gala, where a total of twenty-nine Golden Sheaf statues were presented Saturday night, marked the conclusion of the 78th anniversary edition of the Yorkton Film Festival, the longest continuously running film festival in North America.