“A Screenwriter Is A Creator Of History”: Ukrainian Writers Guild Backs WGA “Unconditionally”

Max Goldbart
·2 min read

EXCLUSIVE: The fledgling Guild of Screenwriters of Ukraine (GSU) has backed its WGA counterparts “unconditionally,” stating that a “screenwriter is a creator of history and this should be evaluated appropriately.”

In a statement shared with Deadline, the 41-strong GSU’s President Andriy Babik urged U.S. writers to “be brave, like Ukraine” and said his outfit “absolutely and unconditionally supports the strike of our American colleagues.”

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“We are always happy, if there is such an opportunity, to provide them with some real help, in addition to psychological help,” said the statement.

“Ukrainian screenwriters definitely support the strike of their American colleagues and fully share their philosophy, which is based on a clear and understandable definition: a screenwriter is a creator of history, and this should be evaluated appropriately.”

The GSU was formed last year “during an air raid when city transport stopped in Kyiv,” according to Babik, a writer on popular Ukrainian drama The Sniffer, which was picked up by Netflix. The first Ukrainian creative trade union representing domestic film and TV has since accrued nearly four-dozen members and has requested admission to the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe.

The GSU’s statement stressed that the nation that brought the likes of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People to the world lags far behind the U.S. in terms of worker rights.

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Deadline’s Full Strike Coverage 

“There is practically no such thing [as a collective agreement] in the Ukraine,” added the GSU. “We do not work under a collective agreement between the screenwriters’ union and the producers’ union, but under an individual agreement between an individual screenwriter and an individual producer, and this significantly increases the legal insecurity of screenwriters. We completely do not have such a concept and such a process as royalty.”

One major WGA/AMPTP sticking point has been around AI and the Ukrainian Guild also acknowledged that there are “possible consequences of its use in creativity.”

The strike has been rumbling for more than a week now and numerous international writers guilds have thrown their weight behind the WGA. Guilds in Australia, Canada, India and the UK have ordered writers to refuse to take work for the conflict’s duration.

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