Arkadii Nepytaliuk grew up in a small village in Ukraine’s Khmelnytskyi region under the control of the Soviet Union. “As a child, I did not know about the existence of LGBT people at all. I learned about them in Kyiv when I was studying … and they scared me a lot. I was scared to imagine that a guy could fall in love with another guy.”
Nepytaliuk, now 56, is a film director whose latest film Lessons of Tolerance hopes to challenge Ukrainian people to rethink how they treat others in society. Inspired by Igor Bilyts’ 2017 play Gay Parade, the film follows a struggling, homophobic Ukrainian family who agree to host a gay activist in exchange for funding from the EU. Like the family in his film, Nepytaliuk found his prejudices started to give way to acceptance by “studying, talking and working” with LGBTQ+ people as he got older. “I discovered that these people are just like me … and in [that] process of discovery my fear of LGBT people decreased and disappeared.”
Lessons of Tolerance hopes to hold a mirror up to Ukraine’s heterosexist societyand is aimed at heterosexual audiences. “I think it could help change people’s mindsets,” says Bohdan Zhuk, director of Ukraine’s first LGBTQ+ film festival Sunny Bunny. “In Ukraine, people’s ideas about queer people are still largely stereotypical and based on lack of information and propaganda. The great part of this film is that it encourages audiences to break down the stereotypes in their head and instead draw conclusions from meeting an actual gay person.”
Despite Ukraine being the first post-Soviet country to decriminalise homosexuality in 1991, legal progress and social acceptance has lagged. Although there are laws against discrimination in the workplace, there is no recognition of any form of same-sex union, nor are there any laws recognising anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes or banning conversion practices.
For much of the film, the activist, Vasyl, patiently challenges and subverts the family’s stereotypes of a gay man. For instance, the father and son are both surprised to learn Vasyl is a plumber, with the father remarking: “Uh, a gay plumber? What a tall tale.” Slowly the family’s fears about gay men start to disappear. The father who starts the film worrying about him being a “threat to kids” goes as far as to ask Vasyl for massage lessons as a surprise for his wife.
Lessons of Tolerance is being given a wide release across Ukrainian cinemas starting on Valentine’s Day, which is a hopeful sign it will be seen by many – though the film is coming out weeks shy of the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion. This may actually help the film’s reach and impact given the ongoing conflict has unexpectedly become a catalyst for a huge wave of political and social support for LGBTQ+ Ukrainians.
According to research by Nash Svit, Ukraine’s leading LGBTQ+ organisation, in 2023 only one third of Ukrainian people viewed the community negatively, while almost two thirds (63%) believe LGBTQ+ people should have equal rights. To put that into perspective, just eight years ago, 60% of Ukrainians felt negatively about the queer community.
This striking change of heart is understood by many activists as a direct result of the Russian invasion. “Attitudes of Ukrainians changed because of the war,” says Zhuk. “We all know we have one enemy and that’s Russia. Russia is trying to kill us and erase our culture. People are realising that someone being gay or bi doesn’t pose a life-threatening risk to them.”
As Ukrainian patriotism, sovereignty and democracy have become increasingly defined in opposition to Russia, groups such as LGBTQI Military have played a pivotal role in raising awareness of Ukrainian LGBTQ+ soldiers serving in the war. “The presence of LGBT people openly fighting Russia as part of the Ukrainian military is really helping make our community visible,” says Lenny Emson, the Ukrainian-born executive director of Transgender Europe. “We are now being seen as a responsible social group that is fighting and dying for the country.” As a result, there is growing support among the public for same-sex civil partnerships, and there is now a draft bill making its way through Ukraine’s parliament.
In many ways, Lessons of Tolerance’s message of overcoming difference through shared experience and common humanity parallels the way Russia’s invasion has changed people’s perception of who is a threat and conversely, who is an ally. For Nepytaliuk, this is why the film “is very much needed in Ukraine right now. On the one hand, we are at war with an external enemy, the aggressive Russian occupier who wants to return us to the totalitarian past. On the other hand, we desperately need to destroy our internal enemies, our ‘medieval’ prejudices.”
However, scepticism among activists suggests recent progress is quite fragile and only in relation to the war. “We must not underestimate the people and forces working against LGBTQ+ equality,” says Emson. “Pride events in Ukraine can still only happen under conditions set by the police and the streets have to be empty. We’re just marching through the streets that are blocked by the police.”
These fears are reflected in Lessons of Tolerance’s harrowing final scene, when Vasyl, having finally won the acceptance of his host family, finds limits to tolerance elsewhere. The contemporary support for LGBTQ+ people among Ukrainians appears to be similarly contingent. People who are queer might be tolerated and maybe even given equal rights insofar as they continue their patriotic duty and serve in the war effort. But what happens when it stops?
Perhaps the best hope is that tolerance can pave the way for liberation. “The world needs a queer liberation whether it knows it or not,” says Zhuk. “More queer films are one of the ways to help make that happen.”
