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Logline

When her mother’s addiction threatens to derail Easter Saturday, a young Ukrainian-American girl goes through great lengths to participate in her family’s gradually abandoned Ukrainian traditions.

Synopsis

Expulsion finds its protagonist, young third-generation Sonja as she prepares for the uniquely Ukrainian ceremony of the consecration of the Easter Basket at her local Ukrainian Catholic Church in the East Village. When her mother asks her to pee in a cup in order to help pass her drug screening the morning of the ceremony, young Sonja must contend with what this favor means on one of the most holy holidays of the year. Sonja’s journey becomes one of inner transformation as she leans into her newfound independence.Can Sonja inherit hope as she leans into something far bigger and wider than her 10 year old self?
 

Meet the Filmmakers

Zonia Pelensky — Writer/Director
Born and raised in the East Village, New York native Zonia Pelensky fell in love with the art of storytelling in large part thanks to her Ukrainian grandmother. Her grandmother, or “bapcha”, would often bring her and her sisters to boisterous Ukrainian-American events in the community, then known as “Little Ukraine”, where the children would stage plays and recite poems of some of Ukraine’s most culturally iconic heroes. Pelen-sky grew up running lines with her grandma at the kitchen table, and in 2005 began her professional acting training with Tony Greco. She has since been acting in indie films and most recently appeared in a starring role opposite Robin Tunney in Apple’s series Dear Edward. She brings her creative process as an actor to her approach as a writer/producer, and in 2020 co-wrote and co-starred opposite Griffin Dunne in One Night Stand, which had its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021. Zonia is currently in development on her directorial debut short film Expulsion, and has a feature in devel-opment.

Helēna Šania Volbeta — Producer
Helēna Šania Volbeta is a Latvian filmmaker, based in NYC. Šania recently graduated from the MFA Creative Producing program at Columbia University. Prior to receiving her MFA she studied at the University of Warwick, earning a BSc Management Honors degree, and volunteered with different charities in Colombia, Brazil and South Africa. Šania enjoys working on female driven dramas that often satirically comment on our eco-socio-political struggles. She is passionate about working on international co-productions and NYC-based films. Her most recent producing work has received support from the James Bridges Foundation and Indian Paintbrush, while her studies at Columbia have been supported by the Grundmanis Fellowship (AABS), Columbia University Film Fund Scholarships and a scholarship from the Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia. Over the past year, she has worked on feature film Goodboy (Leonberg, 2025) that had it’s world premiere at SXSW 2025 and co-produced Matiss Kaza’s (2024 Academy Award winner for Flow) upcoming Latvian American feature road film I Love You Lex shot across multiple states in the U.S.and Latvia.

Ella Gibney — Cinematographer
Ella Gibney is a cinematographer based in Brooklyn, NY. They have worked as a cinematographer on countless shorts that have been screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride, the Palm Springs Film Festival, Montclair Film Festival and Aspen Shortsfest, among many others.

They recently won the Nestor Almendros Award for best female cinematography and were one of the finalists for the competitive Volker Bahnemann Award for Outstanding Cinematography, awarded by ARRI Inc. Gibney graduated from Bard College with an undergraduate degree in Photography, and from New York University’s graduate film program with an MFA.

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Contact

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