Milkina’s Morning Grass has some of the same feel as these old Russian films. Its young protagonist Yacob meets a spirit in the fields who gives him a glimpse of his own future life. The director, who moved to the Netherlands aged 18 to study art, made Morning Grass as her graduation film at the renowned AKV St Joost.

“My best friend was coming to the Netherlands and I decided to join him. I did not know anything about art or what I wanted to study. It was a blind guess,” she explains just how she ended up in Amsterdam, having quit the economics faculty of her university back in Ukraine. “But I never regretted going.” Milkina originally studied printing techniques, but quickly developed her passion for animation. 

The story of Morning Grass is similar to those found in many Ukrainian folk tales about children venturing into the woods and meeting strange spirits there. “Usually, they are evil spirits,” she says. She came up with the story in haphazard fashion. “It all started with a small drawing on a piece of paper,” the director remembers. “I was just sitting somewhere. Actually, I think I was sitting in the forest. I always have my sketchbook with me. I was doodling. A small doodle of a boy and a spirit came up in my head and I quickly drew it.” The film eventually sprang from this one image.

Some western viewers may see hints of Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki in Morning Grass. Milkina admits she is a fan of his work, but suggests any influence from Miyazaki is indirect. “Of course, I cannot say there is no influence from Miyazaki because he is definitely one of my favourite animators but, at the same time, Miyazaki himself took inspiration for his movie Spirited Away (2001) from the Soviet Union cartoon by Yuri Norstein called Hedgehog in the Fog,” Milkina explains.

She decided not to set the film in either Ukraine or the Netherlands. If anything, she suggests, the look of the townscape and countryside is inspired by Georgia. Another point of reference was Ukrainian street art by unnamed artists, photos of which Milkina was collecting during the pre-production phase. “It has a special stylistic and vibe which I never saw in other street art cultures,” she says. Milkina also borrowed some of the storytelling and composition devices used by the renowned Dutch animator, Paul Driessen, whom she had interviewed as part of her studies.

“Sometimes, it is scary to think big… I still try.”

The director has long term ambitions. She is currently working as a 2D animator at Amsterdam-based company Submarine and is hoping to make another short cartoon of her own. “What I can say for now is that it will be autobiographical, about the time when I was in the chess club at my school,” she says of the the film which will be set during her childhood in the Donbass region. Her grandfather taught her to play chess when she was three. The film is not just about chess but about family relations - and how you stay connected to “your dearest who are already gone, but still stay with us. Now, when I play chess, I feel the connection with him [her grandfather].”

After several years living in the Netherlands, Milkina sometimes feels as if she is on Mars. “When I come back to Ukraine, it is like I am in completely another world,” she says. “When I am in Ukraine, I miss the Netherlands. When I am in the Netherlands, I miss Ukraine.” What are the main differences between the two cultures? The director believes that punctuality is treated far more seriously in Ukraine than the Netherlands. “They are never angry if you do not come on time,” she says of the Dutch. “Maybe in the Netherlands, people live more for the moment and in Ukraine, they live more for the future."