EXCLUSIVE: World Children’s Day on November 20 will see the theatrical release of the Oscar-contending documentary Ash and Crayons, Evegeny Afineevsky’s examination of horrors inflicted on Ukrainian children in Russia’s war of aggression, and their indomitable will not only to survive but to thrive.

Briarcliff Entertainment is releasing the feature, which focuses on seven kids who have lost limbs or suffered other major injuries in Russia’s attempted conquest of its neighbor. “Combining vérité footage with animation by Ukrainian artists,” notes a release, “the film offers a personal perspective on one of the most urgent human rights crises of our time.”

Watch the trailer for the film above.

Among the children in the film: 12-year-old Yana, who was at a train station with her mother in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region when the station was hit by Russian bombers. Yana lost both her legs below the knees; her mother lost a limb. Yana uses prosthetics now and has taken up running with specially made blades.

Roman, 8, was visiting a medical clinic with his mother in Vinnytsia when the building was struck by Russian missiles. He was severely burned on 40 percent of his body; his mother was killed. He has resumed playing the accordion and harmonica and recently began participating in ballroom dancing competitions.

Afineevsky earned an Oscar nomination for his 2015 film Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, which documented the Maidan Revolution. He returned to the theme of Ukraine with Freedom on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom (2022). His other directing credits include Cries From Syria (2017), and Francesco, his 2020 film about the late pontiff, Pope Francis.

“I have the strongest and the most resilient stories of these kids,” Afineevsky told Deadline in Berlin last year, shortly after the film (then titled Children in the Fire) screened at the Munich Security Conference. “I have human stories… of the kids — the next generation of Ukrainians. And it’s not just the next generation, it’s for whom the fathers today are fighting on the frontlines.”

Ash and Crayons is expected to get a robust Oscar campaign. In addition to the Munich Security Conference, it has screened twice for members of the U.S. Congress, at the Vatican, UK Parliament, Italian Parliament, and the Council of Europe. The film received the Cinema for Peace Award in Berlin, presented to Afineevsky by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“Since the escalation of the war in February 2022, the UN has verified 3,946 children killed or injured in Ukraine, with the actual number likely to be higher,” reports UNICEF. Per the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, 17 children and 166 were injured in July of this year alone.

Young gymnast Sasha, 7, another of the kids seen in Ash and Crayons, was staying in a house in the Zatoka area of Odessa that got hit by a Russian missile. Her mother dug her out from under debris and Sasha remained in a coma for 15 days. Her left leg had to be amputated. Despite her injury, she has resumed her gymnastics training and has won several competitions.

“You see this determination on the younger generation,” Afineevsky told us. “You can see the younger generation of Ukrainians that have been through hell, went through so many things and despite all of that, there’s still having hope. They’re strong, they’re resilient… They are fighters.”

Adding to the tragedy of so many children being killed and wounded in Ukraine is this disturbing fact: “More than 20,610 children have been forcibly deported or transferred to Russia since the war began,” according to the filmmakers. A handful have been repatriated. The fate of the rest remains uncertain.

Ash and Crayons is produced by Kevin Goetz and Galyna Sadomtseva Nabaranchuk, with support from the Office of the Ombudsman of Ukraine and the Ukrainian State Film Agency (Derzhkino). An impact campaign will accompany the film’s theatrical release, with partners including the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC), Bring Kids Back UA (President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s initiative to return abducted children) and War Child International. UWC says, “the partnership aims to broaden the film’s reach and draw international attention to the plight of Ukrainian children affected by the war.”

Watch the trailer for Ash and Crayons above.

Skydance co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz sought to dial down Hollywood jitters that the company’s massive and expensive-to-service debt load approaching $80 billion will force them shortchange production.

“We have a business plan. There’s a complete financial envelope to how we’re going to run the business, and content is a spend, but you can also see it as an investment because it’s also going to drive growth,” Kreiz said during a press conference Tuesday to mark the close of the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Skydance is looking to annual content spend of $30 to $40 billion.

“As a whole, yes, we have debt. But we expect to reduce the leverage. It’s really about the leverage ratio — what does the debt mean relative to profit. We intend to bring it down as we’ve said publicly two, three times, by 2029 [while] investing in content and at the same time achieving synergies in other parts of the company,” said the former Mattel boss who joined Ellison’s Skydance last week.

“It’s all part of a multi-year plan that will drive growth and expansion and increase cash flow over time, that will allow us to bring debt down, improve our leverage ratio, and continue to run the business for long-term growth,” he added.

Ellison swatted down the argument that “you can’t actually operate more efficiently while investing more in content.”

“I’d just point to the last year, what we’ve done at Paramount. We’ve overdelivered on synergies — $2.7 billion, basically, by the end of this year from an initial announcement of $2 billion. We did that while doubling the film slate at Paramount from eight films to 15, greenlighting four new and returning series, and growing EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a key metric] significantly year-over-year.”

So, “you actually can do both things simultaneously. We’ve measured this incredibly carefully,” he said.

The combined entity will have $70 billion in revenue, Ellison noted, and the plans is to ultimately grow to “a $10 billion-dollar cash flow company … We absolutely have the ability to manage the debt and de-lever while investing for growth.”