Discoveries from Ukraine World Cinema

Oleg's painstaking search for freedom is interrupted by the sudden return of his ex-girlfriend back to Ukraine, calling into question Oleg's lifestyle in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

The day after the students on the Euromaidan were beaten up, the activists of the Center for Civil Liberties opened a hotline for the victims and the volunteer lawyers, thus providing the protesters with legal services and defenders in court. Today, they monitor war crimes, engage in international advocacy, and struggle for the release of Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia.

Young Italian Michele, who has Ukrainian roots, goes to an abandoned Carpathian village to dispel the dust of his mother. Here he meets his grandfather Michael. This unexpected meeting changes their lives forever.

“True art is the strength of its versatility and incompleteness,” says Daniel Lider, a great stage artist, teacher and citizen of Kyiv, the place where his art could express itself most freely. Mixing archive footage of Lider’s creative reflections with biographical facts narrated by his wife, the filmmaker keeps the film concise, bringing its cinematic form closer to the protagonist’s philosophy, as experimental as the television production of the 1+1 TV channel could allow.

A story about children and adults who migrated from eastern Ukraine because of the war and found themselves far from home in a hostel for displaced people. This is a film about the everyday life and pain of refugees, about the search for small details that give strength to live and about adults who are tired of war. It is a self-reflection of refugees who believe that they will soon return home, without a clear understanding of when this will be possible and what awaits them there.

Mr. Manager couldn't even imagine how thoroughly she has been preparing for him to pay a visit. The film is the re-imagining of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

The story of the first months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine through the eyes of a volunteer from Kamianets-Podilskyi and a female volunteer who ended up in occupied Mariupol.

The film tells of a small expedition that decides to track down the lost city in the exclusion zone, where there are extraordinary things.

Documentary footage shot in the summer of 2023 by Oleh Sentsov, when his APC was hit by the enemy. Sentsov found himself in a nearby trench and, using radio communication, organized the evacuation of his unit, which was under fire, with ammunition running out. This operation was nicknamed "Real".

The 1920s, Germany, times of hyperinflation. A young antique dealer realizes that his father’s shop is on the verge of going bankrupt. While going through the journal records, he finds notes about an old client, who owns a priceless collection. He decides to go to the province, hoping to buy it for dirt-cheap.

This is a film-mood. This is the film that was born from the city’s air, from the real situations that were happening to its citizens. That's why the script is relative, even though it exists... It's about the life on the film set. It's about the love in the native city. This is the film about the life that continues...

(Not)Alone is a documentary about the intellectual and ethical burden of war. At the center of the story is the work of the headquarters of the 4th Battalion "Syla Svobody" of the Brigade "Rubizh." Around the clock, they make decisions where every choice carries a human life: from complex logistical chains to direct combat management.

Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei work with staged images that show their own bodies in the landscape of the Carpathian Mountains. Lying still in unnatural positions, dressed in trekking clothes, they seem to ask us: who is depicted on the screen?

Once upon a time there were two Kingdoms: the Militant Kingdom and the Unhappy Kingdom. The intrigues of the Secret Service of the Militant Kingdom made young Princess of the Unhappy Kingdom run away from home.

The film is about the director’s mother, the movie actress Nina Antonova. Now she is 80. She has had hundreds of roles – big and small. It is a personal story about an honest and sad life, about self-sacrifice and freedom. Real fame as an actress came to her only once in her life. It was the leading role in the first Soviet colour TV series Varka’s Land. That was 45 years ago…

A story of Belarusians who were subjected to repression. The film was made on the basis of 25 interviews with victims and chronicles. The film shows the path of a detainee at a protest in Belarus: march and detention, a ride in a prison truck, registration at a police station, trial, prison, release, and reflection on the experience.

The Vilnius Palace of Marriage, opened in 1974, is highly reminiscent of Soviet-era modernist architecture in Ukraine. Mariia’s dance represents her emerging womanhood in a space traditionally meant for the initiation ritual of two people. An episode of the anthology project “Dance + City”, which bridges contemporary dance and architecture across Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, France, and Ukraine. The film was screened both as an episode within the anthology and through independent festival and award distribution.

A wealthy peasant Herasym Kalytka wants to buy his neighbor's land, but he doesn't have enough money. The unknown offers him to buy one hundred thousand fake money for five thousand. Herasym together with the best man Savka buy this money. But instead of money, they are sold blank paper. In desperation, Herasym wants to hang himself, but he is saved. Kalytka's greed almost ended in tragedy, but he continues to dream of land.

The documentary drama about the formation and creative rise of Ukrainian novelist Hryhir Tiutiunnyk in the context of the work and influences of his older brother Hryhoriy. "A writer is born out of love and suffering," wrote Hryhir Tiutiunnyk. There really was no other way for a Ukrainian writer like him, and this documentary is about that.

Narration about the life of the amateur Ukrainian artist Maria Primachenko on behalf of the "great old woman" herself. Biography of the era through the prism of its amazing fate. Talent and boundless artistic imagination. Primachenko's works are her personal way to invent and see the vast world without leaving the small village where she spent her whole life.

Kholodny Yar is a misterious place in the heart of Ukraine, where history meets present in strange ways. Stunning landscapes and meditative moods are represented in this version of the film. Following the nature we plunge in the history of the paradoxical amount of rebellions and try to answer the question: what forces people to defend their freedom at the cost of their own lives?

A young woman gets involved in a typhoon of temptation, pressure, buried secrets and dangerous individuals that prowl the streets of night and has to use her internal strength to create a new balance in her shattered life and start living to the fullest once again.

This is the story of a person trapped in a state of deep apathy. His thoughts are chaotic, as he feels a profound sense of emptiness and disappointment in life.

Selling the homestead can be painflully difficult. The hero is forced to confront the past when she tries to complete the sale of her grandfather’s house. In the place of her childhood she finds some answers to questions about life.

Due to the appearance of a female nipple in the frame of a student short film, a whole committee is meeting at the film university to take a closer look and decide the future fate of the film.

An old couple live their days out in the abandoned village within the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Being at odds, they stopped talking to each other, and now the only way of communication they have is a rusty 'mail kettle' on the wire.

"Mom!" says Yegor, looking for support. His parents Kolya and Anya don't pay attention to him. They are busy packing soviet junk and are going to finally take it out of the apartment to the summer cottage. Children are quarreling. The younger Yegor stole from the older Sofia a candy. But parents don't see the problem until they have to step over the threshold of morality.

Story about school of life for the 12 y.o. kid, who became a hero of Maidan, during the current revolution in Ukraine

A group portrait of Soviet people in the interior of the post-Soviet timelessness. Soviet Jews intoxicated with freedom, who did not want to leave the new Russia, and Soviet officers broken by freedom, who did not want to return to the new Russia. Ruddy first-year soldiers, singing obscene songs, and old men, "are terrible with their blind gazes into the lens, as into the abyss of time." People who died, long before they died. And people experiencing their rebirth. And there are cracked tombstones, ruined cemeteries, abandoned towns, an empty autumn sky and a chronicle of several wars that merged in the memory of an old soldier into one endless massacre that began in 1914 and continues to this day with a premonition of civil war.

Based on Wolfgang Goethe's poem "Forest King". Farewell to children's dreams about the perfection of the world and the permanence of nature. The film has three main characters: the boy Oleksii and his parents, Andriy and Oleksandra. And someone Maxim, the king of the forest, the wind is the subject of secret admiration and fear of Oleksiy: "My dear, the king of the forest is talking to me: he promises gold, pearls and joy" - "Oh no, my baby, you didn't hear that: that wind, waking up, the leaves swayed."

Documentary film about war crime — annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation.

The story is about a fourteen-year-old girl Lisa, who is forced to move with her parents to a small town by the sea because she inadvertently becomes a participant in the senseless death of a classmate due to a dangerous children's game. In the absence of like-minded friends, Lisa loses meaning and thirst for life, and later finds a friend on the social network under the strange nickname White Whale and decides to commit suicide with him as a challenge to the intolerance of their lives. Based on Anastasia Nikulina's novel Salt for the Sea, or the White Whale.

A photographer and his friend, an ethnographer who loves her work, come to the village to celebrate Ivanа-Kupala. But a number of mystical events make them realize that the purpose of their trip is completely different.

Three friends — Sveta, Zhanna, and Marina — set off on a seaside vacation. For each of them, the trip is a chance to escape their troubles. Marina has just been left by her husband, and her stable life collapsed in an instant. Zhanna has driven away her fickle musician lover. And for Svetlana, the getaway is a way to protect her son from persistent fortune hunters eager for his Moscow apartment. A holiday like this couldn’t have come at a better time…

The Petrivka book market is a place where everyone brings their old books they no longer need. The market sellers are people of the old school who still perceive books as a sort of currency.

Transform the object of manipulation into a part of your creative expression.

A woman struggles with the isolation of being confined as a prisoner in a war-torn country.

The Ukrainian Revolution (2013-2014) and the war with Russia in the Donbas are nearing. The film deals with the history of the First Company of the Maidan, which defeated the enemy within and advanced to the frontlines to fight the external enemy. Immersion in the epicentre of events, a frank artistic and civilian view of human relationships against the background of violent social upheaval. Immutable human stories, the collision of charismatic characters, challenges and solutions on the verge of life and death, the search for interaction, the first steps towards the formation of civil society - All of this is summed up by an understanding of the way already travelled and an optimistic view of Ukraine's future.

A short experimental video collage that combines original synthesizer music with a fast-paced montage of personal footage from the filmmaker’s life. It spans his childhood and teenage years in Ukraine, through his displacement as a refugee, and into his current life in the U.S. The piece is a reflection on the feeling of disconnection from one’s past, the abrupt loss of people and places, the loneliness that follows, and what it means to look back at a life that feels like it belonged to someone else.

Wanting to commit suicide, the guy intends to jump off the bridge. An unfamiliar girl intervenes in the process. After communicating with her, the guy still decided to return to life. Still ahead.

The main characters of the film are residents of Odesa who took part in hostilities in the anti-terrorist operation zone. Dmytro Olehovych, Yevhen Tytarenko, Roman Koldomasov, Yevhen Lata, Andriy Skorokhod, Viktor Pogodin, Dmytro Vasyliev. They are all very different, and everyone has their own reasons for going to the front. Everyone has their own "military history". Someone suffered severe moral and physical injuries. And someone even managed to find in the difficulties they had to go through, additional motivation for life and creativity. Someone is ready to return to the anti-terrorist operation zone and continue the struggle. And someone will never see their hometown again.

2022, Russian-Ukrainian war. During a rocket attack on the city, a newlywed couple expecting a child is killed. Two victims of terrorism – who are actually three.

An absurd story reflecting contemporary social problems in Ukraine, told in the century-old language of cinema, linking modernity and traditional Soviet socialist realism. Classical imagery imitates an old ideology contradicting the author’s worldview revealing the roots of reality’s distortion in this post-Soviet ambience showing that cultural, political and economic problems are knotted in military conflict.

Young children go on adventures. Sometimes their imaginations take them far from home, and then suddenly, out of the blue, a child finds themselves alone in an unfamiliar world, on an unfamiliar street, surrounded by strangers. That’s a problem. But it doesn’t just happen to children.

Ten-year-old Ukrainian boy Dima has no parents. He does not want sweets, he does not want a bike, and he does not want a dog. All he wants is to play soccer. Dima finds the Polish-speaking ‘father’... A child, lost in the dysfunctional Ukraine of the Yanukovych era and surrounded by a complete absence of adults, is fighting to carve out a place for himself in society.

The time of exposure is the life span of an object in frame. In this regard, no photo is just a two-dimensional graphic composition - it always has the third, temporal dimension. A photo is a time carrier, the vessel of memory... But whose memory? Of the Face or the Thing or the Landscape which are still on the photo? Of the photographer?

When his younger sister, a single parent, moves into the second apartment with her 5-year-old daughter Nina, an unexpected friendship develops between Josef and the uncared-for little girl.

A melodramatic story about a modern Russian family that, by a whim of fate, ends up in Ukraine. Yana, a successful Russian businesswoman, comes from Russia to a small Ukrainian town to live with her parents. Here, in Ukraine, lives her eight-year-old daughter, who has been raised by her grandparents and the family of Yana's younger sister from an early age. The whole family was looking forward to the arrival of a guest from Russia, but after waiting for her arrival, unforeseen conflicts arise in the family.

Film examines the underground culture of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Three decades after the world's most infamous nuclear disaster, wildlife has returned in the absence of human settlements. Meanwhile, illegal hiking adventurers known as "stalkers," extreme sports aficionados, artists, and tour companies have begun to explore anew the ghostly, post-apocalyptic landscape.

Igor Semyonov, a successful entrepreneur, forty-year-old owner of a holding company and director of Beta Bank, who has been working abroad for the last ten years, arrives in Moscow. After a meeting with his subordinates, instead of going to a planned corporate meeting, he suddenly decides to go to a country villa. There he catches his wife Vika with her lover. This event knocks him out of his usual routine. Having entrusted the divorce process to his deputy, he gets drunk and, without knowing why, goes to the small Moscow suburb of Prigorsk. Once he grew up here, without a father, in utter poverty. He tried to forget his past.... But unexpectedly there are a series of meetings and events that will completely change his life.

A story of a lonely woman, who tries in a somewhat radical way to reach out to the world, which doesn’t care for her personal needs.

An FSB agent comes to the United States to meet with CIA agents to exchange secret documents for an American passport. But he is Russian and that says it all.

Openly gay soldier Pavlo and his boyfriend Vlad become a public couple. Constant media attention takes a toll on their relationship. The film follows their year-long struggle to maintain intimacy under the weight of war, distance, and unhealed trauma.

A musical adventure cartoon for the youngest, because this continent attracts everyone— beasts, pirates, children...and cinematographers.

From its first days, the Euromaidan was guarded by Self-Defense - the volunteers who maintained order and security by working in shifts. Now most of them serve in the National Guard of Ukraine, and the rest have created self-defense squads in cities and villages all over Ukraine and maintain public order. The Odesa Self-Defense revealed a scheme for smuggling fuel via the sea port to the occupied territories of the Donbas.

Since the 18th century, the Lychakiv cemetery in Lviv has been the resting place of those who have defended the city against invaders throughout its history. Close to the Austro-Hungarian graves or those dating from the Second World War, a forest of flags has sprung up on freshly dug tombs, such as that of Y.L Petrov, who fell in 2023 defending the freedom of his country.

The guy falls in love with the supermarket cashier and gives her his heart… in fact… which, along with other packages, goes with a conveyor belt to the cash register.

Industrial Soviet town in the 1970s is suffering from a cholera epidemic. Zina Shamarina, nicknamed Shamara, is a rebel-spirited woman who lives in a factory dormitory and is desperately in love with Ustin, the man who was one of the bunch that raped her years ago and then married her only to avoid prosecution. When Ustin commences an affair with the new girl in town, Shamara is challenged to regain herself and her place in this community.

We remember dates and facts, while losing tiny details – like a bouquet of summer wildflowers, tears from onions, winter cold on a bus stop bench. We remember the birthdays of our beloved and how they like their tea, but we forget unexpected touches, floating glances, casual chats. And sometimes – when we are rapidly torn apart from each other – we engrave such moments into our memory.

This film is about blind maternal love, overcare, that doesn't let the son grow into a man, but makes his inner child stay helpless and infantile for ages.