A ₴187 Million Budget: The Animated Film Mavka and the Studio Behind It

On March 2, 2023, the animated film Mavka. The Forest Song (Мавка. Лісова пісня) was released in cinemas in Ukraine. It was produced by Animagrad, an animation studio in Kyiv that belongs to the FILM.UA Group.

It is based on the 1911 play The Forest Song by Lesia Ukrainka. The play itself, whose protagonist is the forest spirit Mavka, is covered in our article on Lesia Ukrainka and The Forest Song, and the mavka of folk tradition is covered in our article on Ukrainian folk spirits. The same play was also made into a live-action film during the Soviet era, by director Yurii Illienko (the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine gives 1978, the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine 1980). What follows are the years and figures for this film, based on announcements from the State Film Agency and the production company, and reporting by Ukrainian media.

Timeline: From Concept to Release

The concept year (2014) is from the production company’s own account; Forbes Ukraine writes that production took “7 years.” The number of years differs depending on whether you count from the concept, the production, or something else. From the 2016 selection to release, the film took roughly 4 years longer than originally planned.

Budget and State Funding

Yehor Olesov, Animagrad’s CEO and one of the film’s producers, told dev.ua on the release date, March 2, 2023, that the final budget was ₴187 million, of which ₴49.5 million was state funding. Simple division puts state funding at about 26% of the budget. At the time of the 2016 competition, reporting put it at “30% of the total budget” (Detector Media) — the total budget changed during production.

According to Olesov, the bulk of the cost went to development, building out the world and modeling characters and settings, animation and visual effects, and post-production, and more than 250 people were involved at the production’s peak. State Film Agency announcements note that the project also received support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Forbes Ukraine reported in November 2023 that, in April of that year, the production company had explained that the film would break even once $10 million was raised from selling all rights domestically and abroad.

How the state funds films, and how much of any profit is returned to the state, is covered in our article on the film-support law.

Box-Office Records

What Is “Highest Since Independence” Compared Against?

Three weeks after release, on March 21, 2023, the State Film Agency announced that Mavka had “become the highest-grossing Ukrainian film since independence.” This claim carries three conditions on its scope of comparison.

• It compares Ukrainian films against each other, not a ranking of all films including foreign ones
• The period is after independence in 1991; it is not compared with Soviet-era works
• The amounts are in the hryvnia’s face value at the time, with no stated adjustment for inflation

In its release-day article, dev.ua had put the previous record-holder for a Ukrainian film at ₴54.9 million, held by the 2018 comedy Crazy Wedding (Скажене весілля).

The production company has also published a somewhat broader comparison. Its official website states the following.

• It set a record for a Ukrainian film since independence in both box office and ticket sales
• It became the most successful animated film ever released in Ukraine, including works by Disney and Pixar
• It ranked 3rd among all films released in Ukraine since independence, behind Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
• Over 10 months of 2023, it accounted for 9% of Ukraine’s total box office and 51% of the box office earned by Ukrainian films

These are the production company’s own tallies. As for the final domestic box office, Forbes Ukraine reported in November 2023, citing data from the distributor Kinomania, a figure of ₴155.9 million (about $4.3 million).

Release Abroad

The production company states that Mavka was released in cinemas in 148 countries and dubbed into 32 languages (official website announcement, reporting on a presentation at Cartoon Business, a European animation industry event, in autumn 2023). According to production-company data reported by Forbes Ukraine, the most tickets sold abroad were in France (551,000 tickets, $4.1 million), followed by Poland (480,000 tickets, $2.2 million) and Italy (188,000 tickets, $1.3 million).

According to the same announcement, in many countries a Ukrainian-language version was screened alongside the version dubbed into the local language.

Projects That Followed

In 2023, the production company announced plans for a series made with the French animation studio TeamTo, an animated sequel, and a live-action feature aimed at ages 12 and up. The live-action Mavka. The True Myth (Мавка. Справжній міф) was released in Ukraine in late February 2026, and Serhii Sozanovskyi, CEO of the FILM.UA Group, told Forbes Ukraine that box office stood at about $500,000 in Ukraine and about $750,000 abroad (as of June 17, 2026, with screenings abroad still ongoing).