Discoveries from Ukraine World Cinema

Lyokha is dying. He solved all the things, but it lefts... cats.

During the Russian occupation of the Chornobyl Zone in early 2022, a local informant is clandestinely filming the Russian troops. We hear the workers of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Station discuss their experiences during the Russian military takeover of their facility - an act of nuclear terror which threatened another global disaster at this site. Past and present catastrophic scenarios intertwine in this macabre episode of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Two young people, Maya and Mark, find themselves near the Bold Mountain, a place that has been a subject to horrifying rumors. Several years ago Maya's mother disappeared right there.

A little orphan boy, an immigrant from eastern Ukraine, finds himself in an orphanage after the death of his parents and faces the cruelty of other children. He really wants to go to church on Shrove Sunday and apologize for his hatred.

About the teacher of Cherkasy Music School No. 1, the head of the Ecology Society, S. Silkin, giving an interview at an environmental rally during a lesson.

The space of sleep inside and outside the heroine, her fears and personal metamorphoses.

To finally attract Dasha's attention and escape the "friend zone," Andriy and his friend Sasha devise a brilliant plan—to win the Orwin Award (the equivalent of the Darwin Award) by dying in the most absurd and stupid way possible. Genius, right?

What might the confession of a person with body dysmorphia look like? Someone who hates absolutely everything about themselves, constantly comparing themselves to others. The protagonist of the film is surrounded by mirrors and convinced that she is the ugliest person on the planet. But will she be able to change her perception of herself?

Discovered in the lower depths of the Ukrainian black market, here come the infamous works of Soviet sleaze-maestro, Yakov Levi. With casts composed of real-life criminals, prostitutes, and narcotic addicts, this depraved anthology chronicles the misled adventures of degenerate whores, possessed sadomasochists and cursed Matroshka dolls. This Trash Cinema from the Soviet Underground takes transgressive art to a new level of moral corruption.

A man having PTSD is walking across a big desert. Who is he, where is he from and why is he here? Privately, however he has enough time to think about his life purpose - what he's living for and what's the reason of his fight. The answers appear at the end. But no one can guarantee he would accept them.

The Girl and the Boy play in a garden. They are left alone there, and they do not have any obligations to behave in a certain way. This gives them the freedom to create their own ways of interaction with the world. During such an interaction, adult social constructs intertwine into weird children’s folklore and shift into an abstract sphere. There are secrets and various modes of being in the world of the Girl and the Boy.

A film adaptation of the 17th-century epic of the same name. Year 1185. Prince Ihor leads a campaign into the Cuman-Polovtsian lands, defying an old prophecy that foretells his death. During the expedition he falls into an ambush set by Khan Konchak, his wife is surrounded by the Polovtsians, and Ihor himself is taken prisoner. In captivity he faces moral and physical trials, refuses to renounce his homeland and family, and defeats the mightiest warrior of the East.

Before the full-scale invasion, a couple from Odesa, Kostiantyn and Vlada Liberov, were successful photographers: they photographed couples in love, held master classes and taught the art of photography. But after February 24, 2022, they radically changed the vector of their work: they began to work as documentary photographers in the hottest spots of the war. Their photos are striking, poignant, terrifying, and no one will be left unmoved by them. The works of Kostiantyn and Vlada have traveled all over the world, they are shared by thousands of users on social networks and published by the largest international media, including BBC, Associated Press, Welt, Vogue and Forbes. Photography became their weapon in the fight against the enemy.

"Almost 10 000 voters" is a documentary, presenting how does democratic process work in today's Ukraine. However the director is not focused on the works of the government or the strike on the famous Maidan, but on an average small town, where the most important decisions are made. She carefully observes locals discussing politics on the street market, kids being thought how democracy works by their teacher; and young men, dressed in uniforms, going to war, not knowing if they will return. The film is a perfect example of how small-scale story make a big impact on the audience.

Iva comes to an authentic and picturesque provincial town in the mountains, where forgotten places have a warm scent of the past, lighting up a desire to bring back her first love, Boris, who is preparing for marriage. Contrary to the social norms, Iva goes right into the very heart of the events, the wedding ceremony, to archive her goal, but who knows how it will turn out.

Ukrainian silent film, based on a "Taras Bulba" by M. Gogol. Lost.

The story of a modern, cultured woman Penelope, who lives in Lviv and works in an archive. The life of Penelope is based on the usual routine: family - work. So everything is decent, polite and - unbearably boring. But one wonderful day everything changes. Young doctor of sciences Dmytro Ostromyrsky comes to the archive. A meeting of heroes leads to uncontrollable passion and crazy actions.

When Andrey was 12 years old, he could easily hang on a basketball hoop. When he was 14, he could not fit into the photo. Now he is 22 years old and 207 cm tall. Being tall is always a trouble. But being tall is not the main trouble of Andrey.

Chernivtsi, 1905. Sofia is a writer, so she helps Adam draft a proposal for Khristina. A private conversation between the two women reveals their unexpected emotional closeness, and now Sofia must choose between her own truth and societal expectations.

To travel all over Ukraine, collect 25 casts of Ukrainian girls' bodies and make a sculpture out of them for Independence Day. Ceramist Slavik Pasynok spent the summer creating his project ‘The One’. To do this, he made a cast of a certain part of a girl's body in each region. He formed a sculpture from the casts, and the UA: Culture team filmed the process. Is it possible to assemble something unified from different parts?

The girl leaves her home and remembers a quarrel with the groom. Getting on the bus on the highway, she starts a conversation with a man, who later says that this bus carries people's souls and she is also dead. The girl then casts the mind back to her suicide after an argument.

Observation of one day. On this day, different people's feelings are intertwined, such as anxiety and aggression; sadness, loneliness, and indifference; there was also fun and serenity, as well as reliance on love, faith, and hope. How to feel this day? Live in a smartphone or real world? - Come outside, Masha. Feel yourself alive.

A young man is refusing to believe that he has cancer and is procrastinating till the very last moment to tell his girlfriend about the scary but obvious symptoms. Once he realizes that he has very little time left, he turns his hesitation into his strength. He proposes to his girlfriend, introduces his bride to his father, who is dying of cancer and decides that he must survive, he must live for the love of his life, and he decides to get the surgery. Now it's up to doctors' whether the love or cancer wins.

What if Rocky Balboa was a Polish girl, with a speech impediment and only 152 cm tall, dreaming to study at a theatrical university in Kyiv? Meet Veronika Kleshnia – she will teach you how to become successful.

Two soldiers in the whirlpool of war. A woman and a wounded man. What is stronger, spirit or metal? The will to live or the quirks of fate? Everything is just beginning.

The story of a son who is secretly in love and a lonely, hard-working father. Each leads his own life – until one sultry summer day, their courses collide with a shock.

Husband of a strict self-made girl falls ill with a strange disease. Looks like coma, but he constantly and miserably cries. The doctor gives a recipe, which looks absurd first: to save her husband, she has to "become a woman". This coming back to femininity turns out to be the hardest nut to crack for the modern emancipated woman...

A mother teaches her son how to cook borscht using an old family recipe. She shares little tips and secrets, points out important details, and recalls family anecdotes along the way. The son asks questions and clarifies steps. They share this poignant moment of generational closeness — cooking together, chopping together, simmering together, chatting, setting the table… …until it becomes clear they’ve been speaking over video call the entire time. The son is making his mother’s borscht in a house near the Zaporizhzhia front line, while the mother is in Poltava. He calls his fellow soldiers to the table and thanks his mom.

Here, on April 26, 1986, at one twenty-three a.m., the largest man-made disaster occurred, the biggest that people know and remember. How did this accident change human destinies? How has it affected all of us?

Amidst the Coney Island backdrop of fireworks on July 4th, 1949, Della, a battered, young black woman leaves her husband in pursuit of a brighter future. Her courageous journey leads her to find an unlikely ally named Mishka, on the white side of town. Though their paths cross in the darkest of times, through truth, they find a way to unearth the light in each other.

During the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in the spring of 2022, Russian troops occupied the suburbs of the capital for more than a month. This film is dedicated to the educators of the Kyiv region, who did not despair even under shelling, enemy control, and the constant threat to their lives. The viewer will travel through the educational institutions of Hostomel, Irpin, Bucha and Vorzel, to become acquainted with those, who hold, and will be holding in their hands the future of our country.

The young NKVD associate Athanathiys Lapin by the accident caused the falling of Leader's portrait, the portrait of Joseph Stalin, while settling down at the new place. When he gets into such situation, he adjoins the system for real, becoming a part of what he didn't even expect.

Ukrainian existential western. Having lost his family, the old Ivan is going mad, he colors his face with paints and puts on a Gothic head-wear made of feathers, he removes icon from the frame. Ivan builds himself a coffin with his own hands and prepares for meeting with the death. It seems nobody can bring his mind back. An unexpected meeting with a vagabond black dog changes his plans. Looking into the dog's eyes, Ivan comes round, he realizes that the death has arrived and meets it with dignity. The old man washes the paint off and takes away the head-wear, he returns icons to the frames and disassembling the coffin, builds a doghouse for the dog. Ivan dies with a smile on his face.

Meat-based or vegetarian, with or without beans, potatoes in or out, tomato sauce or real tomatoes added, dried mushrooms or smoked pears, or maybe just mom's borsch? Which variant should be considered "the real thing"? The battles have been lasting for years. That is why Yevhen Klopotenko, a well-known chef, sets out on a journey across Ukraine to uncover the most fascinating borsch recipes and to find the secret ingredients which make this dish unique.

Captured during the events of Euromaidan revolution in Kyiv, Ukraine, an expressive argument looks like something out of the movie by Sergio Leone. Short documentary sketch by Babylon 13. As per Babylon'13 tradition, no filmmakers were initially credited for the short piece, although following festival screenings and awards identified Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk as the filmmaker behind it.

A parable about the purity of moral relationships.

Displacement crisis has reached 100 million people globally. 60+ Ukrainian refugees were involved in making the film, sending a message of support to all refugees. The film focuses on the PTSD that people experience after fleeing the war.

The main character buys a special seed from the pharmacy, from which she plans to grow an ideal man. She wanted love. Desperation brought her to the pharmacy, and the pharmacist sold her illegally grain. Having planted the grain, she began to wait. In a barrel, feeding on her care, He sprouted. Still a fragile, unintended sprout, but an ideal man of her expectations. How many shy fantasies she had on this subject. It was only necessary to wait...

One of the first video works from the multimedia project Body Practices, aimed to initiate a public dialogue about body and sexuality as an important factor in the formation of a culture.

A miracle happens on the eve of the holiday. In the village hut of Dzidzio, none other than Saint Nicholas himself appears. How will the holiday story end? And are the bearded men so popular among Ukrainians – Dzidzio and Saint Nicholas – really cousins? All the answers can be seen in the film. By the way, the filming was not in any other place, but in the hut in which Dzidzio was born.

Experimental short film shows one of the performances of the Orchid Theater under the direction of Mykhailo Koptev, a marginal trash designer from Luhansk. The maestro affirms another status of the artist: there is no client, no mentor, only the art for its sake.

A film adaptation of an excerpt from Ingmar Bergman's book about Anna, a priest's wife and mother of three children, who has fallen in love and wants to leave her family. But before making such a difficult and important decision, she invites her mentor, Uncle Jakub, for a confidential conversation.

After 6 month online dating Masha and Misha are meeting in-personal at first time, Masha finds out the Misha never takes out socks, that starts to drive her crazy, but she doesn`t know, that he has a reason...

Before becoming an animator Anatolii Surma studied to be a tractor driver, and even worked in a regional road service office. His passion for animation began with The Simpsons and South Park. And while American TV series are generally created by huge studios, the distinctly recognizable characters that make up this whole absurdist world come from the hand of an amateur artist from a village in Khmelnytskyi oblast (province). Anatolii Surma never writes scripts for his cartoons. The ones he does write end up in the oven. This is a documentary about the author of the visual identity of Docudays UA Festival 2021 that reveals the secrets behind his creative process, the source of ideas and the inspiration for Anatolii Surma.

On a warm fall day, a construction worker decides to have a lunch break, a young girl takes care of her elderly grandmother, a film director tries to edit his documentary footage.

Documentary about the director of the Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi Historical and Cultural Reserve (Kyiv region), M. Sikorsky. Dr. Drektor speaks at a meeting and gives an interview. Employees of the reserve tell about M. Sikorsky. The Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi Museum of Folk Architecture and Life is shown.

This must be a dream. For Manu this must be a reality. Symbolic story on fear of the greatest dream in one's life. Meeting your other half, together alone and loving that passes away faster than it appeared in the first place. Death and life. And daily bread or... cabbage.

A full, bright, and inspiring documentary about folk weaving as a part of the Ukrainian cultural heritage. Is a story about Ukrainian identity, understood through the aesthetics of various weaving products and their use in rituals. The film consists of 8 novel-episodes, each of which tells about a variety of folk weaving (“Polotno”, “Rushnyk”, “Namitka”, “Plakhta and obhortka”, “Kraika”, “Lizhnik”, “Gunia”, “Kylym”).

Bakhmut, a small city in East of Ukraine, becomes an example for the dichotomy between the Soviet past and the (western) future. The precarious, war-driven landscape and the dreams of financial stability dissolve in the remains of the leisure culture from the past. A short film about the decommunization processes in the East of Ukraine. It reflects how the changes of monuments and regimes affect human beings in their everyday life. Until it finds the culmination of cultural and political borders in one product: the Soviet Champagne. The precarious, war-driven landscape of East-Ukraine and the dreams of financial stability dissolve in the remains of the leisure culture from the past.

How much do you know about the life of birds? Watch this film, and you will have something to share with your kids.

15-year-old Ania secretly in love with her handsome neighbor. Suddenly the girl finds out that a boy leaves the country, and he has no one to take care of his dog…

Film-box, film-excavation, film-hiding place. A brief excursion into contemporary archaeology.

For some reason, it is always easier for people to withdraw into themselves. They are afraid to open the door and let someone in. But the time comes to wake up. And then life and destiny have the opportunity to change. Then a person has the opportunity to see, feel, and accept the world around them.

The naive, pure protest of two young souls against the dullness of the world.

A tragicomic story about a depressed girl who decides to commit suicide at home. At the last moment, she is stopped by an annoying doorbell. When she opens it, she sees a courier who has come to see her by mistake. Ksenia realizes that the stranger has saved her life and realizes the need to finally go to her first psychotherapy session.

A distance of 769 kilometres is what separates a bakery in Kyiv from New York, an occupied town in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. This is where bread baked by people with intellectual disabilities ends up. Although they struggle with their own difficulties, their work saves people in the east of the country, in war-torn areas cut off from supplies. The bakery is a refuge where they can become part of a larger community, which empowers them. In wartime, there is no room for labels or social divisions – only actions matter.

One winter day, a cat-mother left her children at home going to find food for them. But somehting unbelievable happened – she got to Egypt after an accident right through the sky, where, as we know, cats have been considered divine creations for many centuries. There our hero will meet its foreign tribeswoman.

Messenger Tioma lives happy life in the world of his interests. Meanwhile, war rages in the East of his country. War seems illusional like fantasy retold by the media. Until, one day, it reaches Tioma in the form of refugee boy, who steals his bicycle.

Starting on Monday I - [end the sentence with your favourite resolution]. What if this would not have happened? What if this Monday has already turned into a Friday? A Friday's Monday shows day-to-day life, cramped relationships, and the gendered communication of a modern family in the post-Soviet region.