“One can lie with words, but not with music.” Alena Cherny is a concert pianist through and through. Her playing reveals everything from sorrow and rage to enthusiasm and love.

Music has accompanied Alena through difficult times: raised in rural Ukraine, her mother sent her to boarding school in Kiev at the age of nine – a childhood far from home. Following the trauma of Chernobyl and leukaemia, she relocated to Switzerland, leaving her daughter at home with her parents. Today she is an established artist, and wants to fulfil her heart’s desire: to donate a piano to the music school in the village where she was born. Alena Cherny sets off with her instrument on a journey into her past. 2012, 83’ www.appassionata-film.ch