July 13, 2022 / 13:46
The cycle of free screenings of family films in Ukrainian, addressed to families who in great numbers arrived from war-stricken Ukraine, launched in March this year, came to an end. From the outset, the initiative was driven by one objective: to give refugees from Ukraine an opportunity to forget for a while about the violent reality of the war. Thanks to the efforts of the Helios cinema network team, Helios has managed to transform this initiative into a four-month repertoire cycle, which allowed Ukrainians in Poland to easily access the cinema realm of entertainment and culture.
A series of free screenings in Ukrainian took place in the Helios cinema network for nearly 120 days, during which time Ukrainian viewers could watch 22 films available in 52 venues in 44 cities. Free screenings in Ukrainian took place daily, in all cinemas of the network, and week by week their audience grew. The total of nearly 100 thousand Ukrainian viewers visited the Helios cinemas to watch free films.
“We are proud of this initiative, which has been successfully carried out in cooperation with our partners and with the efforts of our cinemas' teams. It has been warmly welcome by the Ukrainian minority in Poland. We believe that in this dramatic time we managed to provide an accessible, safe and friendly space in which Ukrainian children were given the opportunity of spending a nice time with their relatives,” says Tomasz Jagiełło, the CEO of the Helios cinema network.
The cycle of screenings in Ukrainian for children and their families was carried out in cooperation with distributors and partners having family films in the Ukrainian-language version (both with dubbing and voice-over) at their disposal. As part of the cycle, viewers could watch, among others, the “Space Jam: A New Legacy” by the Warner Bros. Studio, popular Disney productions, Italian- and Latvian-produced fairy tales, or episodes of one of the most popular animated series for the youngest viewers: “Paw Patrol”. Apart from the diverse repertoire, during free screenings, each cinema offered to all viewers free-of-charge beverages and popcorn. Moreover, in cooperation with the Media Serwis Zawada publishing house, Helios cinemas gave children a total of 1,000 Ukrainian books to learn the Polish alphabet.
Free screenings for families were not the first initiative of the network addressed to Ukrainian viewers — in order to meet their needs, Helios, as the first cinema operator, already in 2018, began to show films in the Ukrainian language version, gathering a large audience in a significant number of its facilities. In addition, in mid-May this year, the network screened a comedy produced by Ukrainian film-makers; half of the receipts from this event was allocated to support Polish humanitarian operations in Ukraine.
Go back