Drago: Animated short film | 15:51 min | 2024
A young boy's dream of becoming a doctor is challenged when war forces him and his mother to flee their village and start a new life in New York City.
Charcoal pencil and willow charcoal on 12x18 medium weight drawing paper
Written, Illustrated, & Directed by Daniel Zvereff
Music and Sound Design: Sami Jano
Grade: Mike Rossiter,  Re-Recording Mix: Geoff Strasser, Solo Violinist: Zachary Mezzo
Festivals & Premieres: Sundance Film Festival 2024, Florida Film Festival, Palm Springs Short Fest, Rooftop Films 2024, Denver Film Festival, Flickers Rhode Island International Film Festival
Recipient of the Rooftop Filmmakers Fund Short Film Grants
Directors Statement:
I have this memory from the mid-90s: the phone rings, and my grandfather is on the other end. My father seems flustered, repeatedly saying “no” before hanging up. He then tells my mom that my grandfather had called to ask if he would take him back to visit the place where he grew up in China—his childhood street, his home—one last time before he passed away. By then, my grandfather’s eyesight was failing, and he relied on two hearing aids.
Our relationship was distant. I didn’t know him well or much about his life. What I do know is that my grandfather was of Ukrainian descent. His father, most likely killed by Russian Bolsheviks in 1917, had been working at a university in Siberia. He left Ukraine for Russia due to the lack of work in his hometown of Kharkiv at the time. After his father’s death and the family’s displacement, we lost our original name and lineage. His mother, Olga, along with my infant grandfather and another businessman named Zvereff (whose name we took), fled eastward through Mongolia to Peking (now Beijing). My grandfather grew up there, married a woman from Harbin, and had a son. Shortly after, the Chinese Communist Revolution forced them to flee once again, and they ended up in a displacement camp in the Philippines on the uninhabited island of Tubabao for four years before immigrating to the United States.
Of his life in the U.S., I know very little. I remember he spoke seven languages and could draw quite well. My dad would often encourage him to do small drawings for me during our visits—castles with knights, arrows flying through the air—sketched out on notebook paper. He worked for Freightliner trucking company most of his life, remarried to a wonderful step grandmother that I adored as a child and passed away in his sleep in Alameda, California in the early 2000s around the time I moved to NYC.
I spent many years traveling throughout the ex-Soviet bloc, Mongolia, and China as a young man. I remember the first time I was in Beijing, skateboarding through the streets with friends, searching for some marble to balance on. I would peer down narrow streets, looking at random houses, wondering if I had passed his old neighborhood or even his childhood home. Though I knew it was statistically unlikely, I looked at those houses as if I might somehow recognize something I had never seen before.
At the start of 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, triggering a devastating rollercoaster of emotions for my family and friends. I watched on TV as a ruthless dictator plunged the world into yet another senseless war. In the aftermath, my adopted and distinctly Russian last name became a source of discomfort. To some Ukrainians online, it carried an unwelcome connotation, and I received a few understandably unfriendly messages. Naming the film after my grandfather, “Yura,” felt like opening a can of worms I wasn’t prepared to handle.
In the 90s, around the time my father received that phone call, I had a childhood best friend named Nicky who lived across the street. My parents had moved us from apartment complexes in Southern California to a neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. The kids in the area roamed the streets freely—something completely new to me—and they all rode bikes. Nicky’s father, Drago, took the time to patiently teach me how to ride in their backyard. Despite working tirelessly—spending his days at FedEx and driving TriMet buses at night—Drago always made space for moments like that. I decided to name the film after him. The immigrant experience is so universal that it transcends specific places or individual stories. Countless people continue to experience displacement, spending their entire lives holding onto the hope that they might one day return to their home. For many, that hope goes unfulfilled, yet the longing—the belief that it’s possible—remains an enduring part of them.
This film was born from that longing—a wish fulfilled, a shared moment between my grandfather and me. It represents a memory I wish we had experienced together, one that will forever remain imaginary, always just a phone call away. This film is dedicated to all immigrant parents around the world.