Discoveries from Ukraine World Cinema

The documentary explores how nature has acted as a barrier against radiation and how the ecosystem of the Chornobyl exclusion zone has changed 40 years after the accident, with the zone itself becoming an international research site. One of the film’s focal points is the wetlands, which were drained in the 1950s and 1960s and now pose an increased fire hazard and risk of radionuclide dispersion, as well as facilitating enemy infiltration into these territories.

Meet Kateryna and Volodymyr, whose love for dance persists against all odds. 'Rhythms of Resilience' invites you to witness a story of true resilience. It is an great example of to the unwavering human spirit and the unstoppable power of art. "How is it to be a dancer in a country at war?" - This is the main question that the film tries to answer. It explores the lives, struggles and dreams of a young dancers who refuse to give up their passion despite the violence and chaos around them. This isn't just a story of the past; it's a story of mental health, hope, justice, and a future yet to be written. War may seem distant to some, but its impact knows no boundaries.

The film is dedicated to the Armenian genocide.

A new planned film adaptation of Vsevolod Nestayko's novel.

This is an autobiographical story by Daria Zhuravel, dedicated to the childhood and those who are no longer with us, but whose presence accompanies us wherever we go.

Fedir Orlenko was once a renowned ballet dancer who now lives in a small town. Caught in a long term depression, Fedor decides to end his life, but during his last day, he walks around the city to meet the "ghosts" of his past and once again plunge into the magical world in which he once lived.

Through its two parallel plotlines, the film follows the exploits of a volunteer evacuation team in the front lines of Eastern Ukraine, led by young, precociously stoic Anton, as well as the wartime daily lives and unlikely friendship of two elderly women - pragmatic Zinaida and dreamy, starry-eyed Taisia - who decided to stay at their homes in the now de-occupied Chernihiv region. While Anton faces the most visceral horrors of war on a daily basis during his team's urgent, desperate attempts to rescue the most vulnerable, who are often reluctant or unwilling to leave, Zinaida and Taisia seek to pursue any forms of resistance within their power - from praying and writing poetry to hiding historic plaque and reporting intelligence to the Ukrainian military.

In order to breathe "fresh air" into a long-term, permanent relationship, to refresh the relationship and return the lost passion, it is enough for someone to take the "first step" and go beyond the gray everyday life.

A story of lost things and lost people.

Inspired by modernist painters like Kazimir Malevich, Leonardo da Vinci, and Auguste Rodin, this Ukrainian experimental short provides commentary on the short-lived nature of contemporary art. The film deranges the likeness of our culture's most treasured pieces of art, and, in doing so, is gorgeously framed and thought-provoking with a clever eye for the uncanny realizations of our favorite paintings.

Two teenagers made a music video for an international art-group. They just captured a day of their life in the hood using an old handy cam.

Several animators at the resort in Turkey are trying to attract the attention of sophisticated tourists, but it is not easy. How far are they willing to go for the glory and entertainment of the public, and what is the hostage-taking on the plane?

A story about a girl during the war who could not have been a child, but she is hiding from bombs in a ruined house, who never got to know her culture and all the beauty of the world. Where her soul and body early takes away death in the war.

Each of us experiences different events in life. The same circumstances can be perceived differently by different people. Do you choose to see the glass as half empty or half full?

In the life of a theater troupe, art and reality are intricately intertwined. Two actors are preparing for a nighttime television show in which Beretti's mysterious niece brings writer Kwasniewski his first novel, Ariadne's Thread. Bound by that thread, they wander in search of ideals and fail to find them.

A story about how ordinary guys went to defend their homeland, Ukraine. The film depicts the life of one of the first volunteer battalions, which was formed after the start of Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

In the middle of ХХ century the Ukrainian cultural elite faced the problem of choice: to escape and save their national identity or assimilate and remain in the Soviet Union. The film tells the story of New York Group of Poets, founded in 1950. Ukrainian poets, who grew up in the English-speaking world, in the middle of XX century are trying to preserve their culture and grow it to the level of world culture.

A film about the history of the Kyivnaukfilm film studio.

The first optimist and last WWII soldier of a 600-year-old Transcarpathian village, 91-year-old librarian and chess player Yuriy Kurucza carols his stories of life, amours and homeland.

The film crew of the Creative East project is travelling around the Eastern Ukrainian cities researching abandoned areas and buildings. The people they meet offer different perspectives on the problem. Apart from revitalizing abandoned buildings (skate-park Druzhba in Lysychansk), you can also use them for temporarty art interventions (rave parties in the former industrial park in Kostyantynivka) or just leave them as they are (Soviet summer camps on the Azov coast).

World War III has been going on for 70 years. The Soloist, a lonely traumatized by military service 35-year old man with a supernatural gift to recognize and reproduce people's memories with sound, goes on a journey together with the Teacher, a 55-year old woman from a village, who asks him to create a memory that never existed – her dead son’s return from war. Her persistence blends with his desperate desire to recollect his own memories. Together, they embark on a journey to fulfill their needs while overcoming the obstacles of the war-torn world.

The film was made in 2015, shortly after Russia annexed Crimea and ignited the war in Donbas. The confrontation between supporters of an independent Ukraine and European integration on the one hand and «separatists» who wanted to join Russia on the other strongly affected the city of Kharkiv. In the film, the sounds of violence from the past break into scenes of the relatively peaceful life that followed. The public places in the city center of Kharkiv where activists fought some years ago were destroyed by Russian artillery in this year. The film was extended to include images of this destruction because the current war is a continuation of the outbreaks from the past and will forever change our future.

The documentary "Crimea. Liberation" tells the story of a special operation of the Security Service of Ukraine in Crimea in 1994, which lasted more than three months. Back then, the SBU's Alpha special unit stopped a rebellion by Russian proxies who sought to separate the peninsula from Ukraine overnight. The film features the direct participants of the special operation: the first Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Yevhen Marchuk; SSU Lieutenant General Vasyl Krutov; SSU Major General Vitaliy Romanchenko; SSU Colonels Serhiy Ropaev and Pavlo Dubrov, Colonel Ivan Yakubets, as well as Valeriy Kozyarsky, Refat Chubarov and Oleksandr Paliy.

The personal and intimate story of the friendship of three women and the struggle to live their everyday life while studying abroad in Scotland as a full-scale war takes place in their home country in Ukraine, where their families and close friends are.

Before the full-scale invasion began, cinematographer Serhii Mykhalchuk was making feature films that were watched in Ukraine and around the world. His work includes about 40 films, 4 of which were nominated for an Oscar and received dozens of world awards for cinematography. However, with Russia's attack on Ukraine, Serhii Mykhalchuk's focus has completely shifted to non-fictional, real-life stories. Having picked up a camera on the first day of the invasion, he still records the events and participants of the war every day. This is the story of an artist who stood up to defend the country at a crucial moment for the country, and a warrior whose main weapon remains creativity.

The shadows is about homelessness, but not about hopelessness. The difference between them it’s just one letter. But at the same time it’s an abyss. This story began three years ago as an observation of the photographer Sasha Chekmenyov during his work with the homeless. It was supposed to be a film about another world that we wish to ignore.

By fateful chance, Grigory – an elderly playwright from occupied Ukraine – ends up in conservative Europe as a refugee. Faced with an absurd, unexpected, new reality, he begins to write a comedy play about the real life circumstances of refugees. Despite the fact that he finds shelter in a Jewish dormitory, he gets a job as a chess teacher in a Catholic school, and even receives temporary EU citizenship documents. Throughout his ordeal, he desperately searches for a way to return to his homeland, Ukraine, the epicenter of war.

TV documentary for the 1500th anniversary of Kyiv.

A successful dancer from the capital relocated to a transcarpathian village, escaping from horrors of the war in Ukraine. She forced to change her common life radically. She starts working in the farmer's field in a countryside, but her artistic nature prevails over the circumstances.

There are some 77K foreign students in Ukraine. Naveen S G of India is one of them, studying in Kharkiv and hiding in a shelter. On 1 March, as he goes to buy some food, he becomes the first foreign student killed by Russia in this war. An episode of the web series "Ukraine on Fire 2" by Vyacheslav Bihun , which had a separate festival distribution as an independent work.

The first cartoon about the adventures of a dog named Movie. On New Year's Eve, Movie saves Father Frost's gifts from hooligan cats and receives an invitation to go to the holiday as the Snow Maiden.

An animated almanac of works by animators from around the world on the topic of Russia's armed invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 and what the end of the Russian dictator might be, at least on the screen.

True stars live in the darkness and sometimes you have to try really hard to see them.

The military conflict forces Ihor to move to another city in peaceful territory. Here he finds hope for a relationship and a new life. But it is not so easy to escape from war.

The story of the adventures of a small unattractive but very good doll who is willing to help his friend even at the cost of his life. There are two realities in the cartoon - the world of dolls made in a doll factory, and in fact, the real world in which the main character of the film finds himself.

A revolution changes the social and political 'landscapes' of a country, but first and foremost it changes the physical landscape. For centuries none of the city centers of the world capitals looked nothing like the Maidan in the last few months, which resembles a medieval town and a futuristic fantasy at the same time.

A small girl bored while staying alone with her busy Grandpa in his house. She tries in any possible ways to grab his attention, but something goes wrong…

Ukraine is hardly visible on the map of the world. At the same time, it is one of the very few countries that have a positive image of future. There is no festival like GOGOLFEST in the whole world. It takes place every year since 2007 in Ukraine. The festival is established by Vlad Troitskyi, a Ukrainian director, screenwriter, actor and the founder of Dakh Theatre. GOGOLFEST breaks the old way of thinking and shatters the ferrous curtain of ghosts of the past. His task is to resume the tradition of the avant-garde.

Crimea. A young Crimean Tatar Aziz falls in love with Masha, a Russian girl. Their parents will stop at nothing to separate them.

A bicycle is a good tool to explore a city and exploring the bike culture is a good approach to understanding local society. What a bike portrait can tell us?

For the first time in several years, a father with his son decided to have dinner together. Will they be able to find a common language?

On November 3, 1996, «the richest man in Ukraine», Yevhen Shcherban, was killed in Donetsk. At the time of the murder, his fortune was estimated at about $ 500 million. Scherban's companies were engaged in the production and sale of metal, gas, oil products, construction and financial transactions. The elder son of the murdered businessman Yevhen Shcherban Jr. has been conducting his own investigation since 2013 and is trying to find out where his father's inheritance has disappeared.

What is left backstage of the heroic videos of our warriors in Ukraine? What do they have to face, one on one, in peaceful life, and where does the war stop?

Until recently, 21-year-old Timofey Anufriev — the son of renowned artist Sergey Anufriev — was an ordinary student in St. Petersburg. For more than a year now, he has been fighting for Ukraine as part of the RDK. The "The Insider" film crew met with him in Kyiv. In the film by "The Insider", Timofey speaks about why he made this choice, about war, and about death.

This incredible story took place on New Year's Eve, December 31, on the birthday of the main character, Mila. Her fiancé unexpectedly left her for another woman, who turned out to be her brother. And on New Year's Eve, Mila's childhood friend proposed to her, and by a strange coincidence, his father made a similar proposal to Mila's mother. Finally, Mila met her biological father, who, after 25 years, decided to get to know her and reconcile with his ex-wife...

In John B. Benitz’s documentary Behind the Lines, you might end up questioning whether history should just be written by historians. Based on Andrew Carroll’s New York Times best seller Letters of a Nation, Behind the Lines, and War Letters and inspired by a subsequent stage play, Benitz’s film tells the story of Carroll’s life mission to travel the world seeking out war letters. Over the past 25 years, he has preserved more than 200,000 correspondences from troops, veterans and their families, dating from the American Revolution to present day Ukraine. In Behind the Lines, we accompany Carroll on his continuing quest; one of fact finding but also tremendously emotional. This is captured evocatively when letters written by soldiers, some of whom having lost their lives only a day after having written them, are read by various actors such as Laura Dern and Gary Cole. The film is narrated by Annette Bening. – Adam Schartoff

The unseen damage inflicted by war on personal relationships casts its shadow over the homecoming of Serhiy, a veteran haunted by loss. He finds himself increasingly isolated as he battles to reconnect with his wife, Nadiia, and their three sons, Sasha, Artem and Nikita. The film takes an unexpected turn when Serhiy turns the camera on its director. This role reversal creates a space for vulnerable dialogue about love and human relationships as the filmmaker shares her own experience of break-up with another war veteran.

A street artist from Kharkiv travels to the liberated city of Izyum, which is 60 km from the front line, previously occupied by Russian forces. The artist draw his works on the streets of the destroyed city during Russian occupation and meets local residents. One of them is Volodymyr, who lost half of his family in the collapse of a building. Interacting and observing the artist's work inspires him to start changing his life.

Minimalistic animation about ancestral roots, youth and love made in a folk style with the use of Ukrainian ornaments, visual images that correspond to the story line of the music composition of the same name by the band "Yurcash" which accompanies the animation work.

Thirty-something old fellow - Ostap - rides his bike back home after booze-soaked conversation with a friend. On his way Ostap meets an attractive girl. She appears to be a prostitute, he appears to have not enough money to apply for her services. But she have no client at the monent and does not mind to have a chat. She even agrees to go to Ostap's place.

Short documentary film-portrait of Anastasiia Konfederat who is an openly lesbian volunteer and air reconnaissance specialist.

The stuff and visitors of one of the state institutions going through their daily routine. This buildings is full of mystery and secrets. Nobody can understand the issues they are trying to solve or to find the final destination of their corridor marathons. We can only trust and wonder how everything is organized here.

The protagonist tries to fight financial problems, in this he is helped by his best friend. They decide to get rid of the debt and get rid of the person at the same time.

A documentary feature film about Oles Uljanenko, an author and cult figure of Ukrainian post-Soviet culture. His works were banned by Ukrainian authorities having judged them as pornographic and as ones that should be destroyed.

Humans are the most complex creatures. Times change, but human consciousness remains a mystery. What drives us to behave in certain ways, and sometimes to do things that we would never think ourselves capable of? Do we really know the people around us? Do we really know ourselves?

Lyuba works at a confectionery factory. Her son is in the war zone and there is no connection with him. Lyuba goes in search of his son in an unfamiliar territory.

Childhood memories mixed with remnants of Soviet anti-American propaganda.

Two young people who follow different diets live together and love each other despite their opposing views. Because love is stronger. One day, the girl's parents come to visit to meet their future son-in-law. This provokes a tense situation and almost leads to conflict. After the parents leave, the guy tries to change his habits, but nothing works. However, the girl understands him: you have to love your loved ones for who they are.