Discoveries from Ukraine World Cinema

Stories united by the Revolution of Dignity. Charismatic and honest characters tell about their own Maidan: Lesia Khomenko, Alevtyna Kakhidze, Maks Vehera, Oleksii Furman and Bohdan Kutiepov.

The film tells three personal stories about the famous bicycle. The film's protagonists are a cultural manager from Kyiv, an engineer from Kharkiv, and a utility worker from the Carpathians. These are very different people, but they are all united by the fact that they ride the Ukraine bicycle.

They can sense survivors under rubble three metres deep, warn our soldiers of an approaching enemy and show sappers where to look for a mine. And they are also cute. Service dogs and dog handlers saved us even before Russia's full-scale invasion, but after 24 February, the threats and challenges increased. The film is about how dogs and military, rescue and rescue dog handlers cooperate and coexist, how they meet each other, build trust and mutual love, learn responsibility and save lives at the risk of their own.

With exclusive access to the first days and weeks of Ukrainian offensive operations in the south of the country, this reportage documents the effort, struggle and price of reclaiming each kilometer of one's homeland by focusing on the fate of a few Ukrainian soldiers.

An original short film that explores important contemporary issues in an unpredictable way and dedicated to the defenders of Ukraine.

Deployments for combat missions for Apache, a tank commander, is a daily routine task. But this time he needs to do a mission with a gunner who is deploying to the confrontation line for the first time. A simple story about the complex work of the tank operators of the 36th Rear Admiral Mykhailo Bilynskyi Separate Marine Brigade - about equipping the tank, preparing the crew, and about the baptism by fire for a gunner who was a civilian just recently.

Steal a child and force his mother, a former professional athlete, to slander Donald Trump for sexual assault. Then kill her, raising the degree of scandal. This was the plan of the conspirators, who hunted the President.

An attempt by the director to delve into the nature of sexuality and relationships with her friend in order to understand what their experience together was for them.

The temperature of the Sun is rising mercilessly. In a few hours, the Earth and its inhabitants will disappear in the fires of hell. But there are those who will survive, flying in spaceships to another galaxy. Among these lucky ones are Bodia and his boyfriend Max. At least, that's what Bodia thinks. Max has completely different plans. He dumps Bodia, stealing tickets to a rescue spaceship for himself and his new boyfriend Vasya. Bodia is preparing to face death alone, until his friend Sasha shows up. She's serious about kicking Max's ass, getting the stolen tickets back, and mending her friend's broken heart. But the friends don't have much time for that.

A cinematic journey to places of power and destiny of the screenwriter of the legendary Ukrainian film "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors".

Behind the facade of the phrase "All good" there may be a story that is not being told.

An 85-year-old Ukrainian woman talks for the first time about her love and brush with death during special operations in the fight for her country's independence.

Rediscovering Chendej’s role in making one of the best movies, «Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors», a timeless Carpathian love story and cinematic image of Ukrainian spirituality.

A fox tries to obtain a crow's cheese by flattery. An adaption of Ivan Krylov's version of Aesop's fable, "The Fox and the Crow", and a parody of avant-garde opera by the Ukrainian vocal duet, Duo Zikr.

Mariia is a bright person and a creative teenager. One day, life presents her with a difficult test: the occupiers entered the city, but the girl can not leave the house and escape through a broken door lock. While waiting for help, she documents every day how she tries to survive. Over time, food supplies and water run out. Due to periodic shelling in the apartment and the light disappears. The danger that enemy soldiers will destroy her home increases. Hope fades. Struggling with despair, Maria now faces a choice: to accept the fact that she will not be helped, or to continue to hope for the best and not give up.

A documentary essay-video diary of the film's author's feelings, in which she documented her emotional states during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The film explores the concept of loneliness through a poetic words. It doesn't matter how high a person soars in his successes or in big cities where we seem to have many friends, fans, and acquaintances, but still feel lonely.

Lisa and Sasha live together, but due to the tension of staying in war-affected Kyiv, Lisa wants to move abroad, and Sasha has to accept the inevitable changes in her life: the departure of her friend and the forced move to her new own rented apartment.

Shchedryk - the melody that recognized all over the world from the first notes. It glorifies Ukraine abroad. It is played in movies and broadcasts are made about it. Today we proudly announce that the famous song Carol of the Bells is an interpretation of our famous Shchedryk. However, until recently, few people knew that the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovich wrote music on the words of the Kolyadka, which are the oldest examples of Ukrainian folklore, which, according to the artists, came from the Podillya. However, this melody has a special connection with Podillya for a number of other reasons.

Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park is a nature reserve on the Black Sea. It’s the nursery for fish and dolphins, kingdom of birds, a land of rare plants and endangered animals. For many years, park protectors led by Ivan Rusev and Iryna Vykhrystiuk have been fighting for the preservation of the Lagoons.

In the film of the project "Cities and Their Heroes" about the Ivankiv, Kyiv region, the hero is Hennadii Popenko, an actor and TV presenter until 2022. And having survived the occupation of Ivankov with his family, he became a soldier of territorial defense (aka Teroborona) and an active participant in community life. The film was shot as part of the "Cities and Their Heroes" project, dedicated to the courageous resistance of Ukrainians to armed Russian aggression, and which includes not only short documentaries, but also a number of articles and other materials.

An animated film based on genial paintings by Maria Prymachenko (1908–1997), a renowned Ukrainian naive woman artist, who is in top five Best primitivists of the world.

Volodymyr Kalnenko is a freelance artist-painter who was recognized in St. Petersburg, had a wide circle of communication, money, and a workshop. After returning to Ukraine, everything changed dramatically. The artist faces great challenges. After all, every creator is thin-skinned before the gray everyday life. The hero involuntarily confesses, having come to the conclusion that while God allows painting, it is necessary.

Novel film: the story of the interesting life path of one picture and its unusual use at the end.

The famous Ukrainian actress Larysa Kadochnikova restored her self-portrait and found out about herself. And not only.

One boy was worried that no one perceived him as an adult and independent person. He wanted to do something or realize himself in an exciting profession to be worthy of respect of his parents and family. But for now these goals were not available for him to achieve, so he was limited by flying rampant imagination.

The artist is a form that brings us back to the idea of capturing and transforming the image into its own movement, creating a dialogue between a frozen mass and the movement of the camera following the tectonics of music and the score, forming a process of expansion and continuation of life.

A motion-picture essay about the beginning of the Russian invasion - an attempt to demonstrate a portrait of people, who are being forcibly uprooted from their homeland.

Tactical Forgetting is a computer-supported exercise that tackles the issue of digital memory and distributed events that need to be forgotten either because of their sensitive content, or because of community safety. Narratives unfold within different temporalities and spaces: documentary footage of the labor inspection in a large company in Minsk that develops military computer games, disappeared content from servers of internet portals, the distributed memory of bodies participating in the revolution, and fictional desired economic strikes. This video can be seen as a playthrough, which one traverses following the threads of the mental exercise.

It was deserted and lonely around. The protagonist planted a seed. It was beautiful and pleasing to him, but he still decided to bury it in the ground, giving the seeds a chance. Days and nights the man was sitting near the place, keeping an eye on the work done. Warmed by the sun, once it started to grow.

The story of the world tour of the choir chapel conducted by Oleksandr Koshyts in 1918-1924. By the coincidence of modern history, the plot of the film raises a number of current problems of today - opposition to Russian cultural expansion and propaganda, issues of cultural diplomacy of Ukraine, the place of Ukrainian cultural product in the world and its struggle for itself.

The story of simple village boys who became true friends after a dangerous incident.

A lot of events take place in the Jewish town on the eve of Saturday. We must have time to visit everywhere and see everything. Only the story of the prophet remains untold. Ukrainian animation based on Jewish folklore.

Real feelings are nourished by sensitivity, attention and tenderness. In the race for stability and success, it is so easy to forget to feed this pet, to caress and scratch behind the ear. Easy to forget, but impossible to lose! Love is not so easy to scare away, it will show the way and put everything in its place. Maybe just a little nap is enough?

A documentary-dance film which explores the legacy of Soviet architecture in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The film was shot in September 2021, at a time when the prospect of a full-scale invasion from Russia seemed remote, but the ghost of its former rule remained written in concrete across the cityscape. The film platforms a divisive and open conversation about the city’s Soviet buildings: What should be done with them? Should they be preserved, destroyed, repurposed? What power do they hold over the way people think and interact with their environment?

He had been dreaming about this day for a very long time. Run away! As far away as possible from this provincial country, from degraded people. Finally, the suitcases are packed, the ticket is in hand, only a few kilometers separate this park from the airport and that's it: arividerci, Ukraine, bonjorno, Italy! But some heavy sadness in the soul does not let go. Whether it's autumn, or premature nostalgia... who among these worthless people wandering around the park could understand it? Explain to him where this aching melancholy came from, and how to get rid of it? Listen to the confession of the future emigrant will have a person who, at first glance, is not very suitable for this…

"He died as a martyr." January 22, a day where all changed forever.

Short Film

The Open Access documentary is an anthology film made up of five separate documentaries that take place after the Ukrainian Parliament approves a law on "Access to public information." The film captures their struggles as public activists.

From sheltering in bunkers to travelling across Europe as refugees, TikTok has been appropriated to chronicle and explain the horror of the Ukraine war.

Young singer from Ukraine, Marta comes to Prague fleeing the war in Ukraine. She struggles to continue sing and decides to become a volunteer.

The first film, "Artels of Fintiktikova's Followers," 2006-2007.

Animated short film about the book by the French author Laurent Gaudé "Nous, l'Europe. Banquet des Peuples" (Wir Europa. Fest der Völker) what was awarded the European Book Prize in 2019. In a long poem and a language in free verse, between poem and narrative, Gaudé reviews the development of the European idea since the mid-19th century - and defends it with virtuosity. The press described the work as "an ode to the past 150 years of European history".

In our age of ever-evolving technologies, virtual reality games are seeping to almost every home. And as we know, on Christmas evening, miracles happen more often and surprisingly could become real for us. In such a festive evening our hero decided to have some fun with the game Beat Saber. This game provoked so many emotions and became a reality for him. How it could be end for him, or would it be just his imagination. Miracle is absolutely near.

The story of 3 different generations of Crimean Tatars. Those who remember the deportation in 1944, those who have returned to Crimea end of 80s - beginning of 90s, those who were born in Ukrainian Crimea. All along we witness the birth of a new family... and this time under the flag of occupants.

Desperate to escape from his home village which has been overtaken by the war in Donbas, a young man deals with numerous obstacles, following his dream. The last obstacle, however, can take his life. A story about a war inside of each person, a mine that many Ukrainians stepped on, and being afraid to accept change.

In the east and south of Ukraine, many people do not speak Ukrainian. Activists organize free courses for everyone who wants to learn, bring book fairs and music bands to cities and towns, and organize meetings with writers.

Five letters to a friend : 2015-2017. In 1981, Ukrainian director Ivan Mykolaichuk shot his film "Such a Late, Such a Warm Autumn" about Ukrainian migrant who misses homeland and comes back from Canada to Ukraine. Ten years later, in 1991 Ukraine gained independence. Since then millions of Ukrainian emigrated to seek a better life; in the very Ukraine grew up the first generation for whom the independence of their country is the only natural experience. What meaning has filled the words "to come from Ukraine"? "To come from the south of Ukraine"? Or - more personally - "to come from Odessa?"

My birthday is the brightest day of a year. My birthday always starts at the cemetery.

Acquaintance with architecture and features of life in Mykolaiv (Ukraine). Residents love their city, but over the years it has lost its shape. How to fix it? Imagine that you have found a magic music box that can change any flaws.

Immigration resembles a postponed Lacan "mirror stage": a traumatic moment of distancing from your ideal "self", from an imaginary mother's uterus. It is an insight of a negative kind that brings me knowledge that I will never lose. This film is a farewell to my old home, a mosaic of my childhood memories and a weeping psalm to the identity which I left behind.

Andrew Phillip Wolfensberger is a radio presenter on Winterthur community radio. Andrew's show Highnoon (the most flourishing and creative period) has been on air for six years and is famous for the song of the week - Andrew singing citizens' letters published in a local newspaper. The film is an essay about Swiss identity, community life, and the relationship between the man and the city.

Casual acquaintances via the Internet often lead to true friendships. The opposite happened to our hero - the offer of an Internet friend for money to provide a small service almost ends in tragedy for both.

Based on the investigation records and the stories of relatives of a little-known Ukrainian anarchist Ivan Krupsky, who is the great-grandfather of the film's director. The documentary dramatizations are dedicated to the paradoxical periods of the protagonist's life: his leadership in a rebel unit, participation in the civil war of the early 1920s, his hiding from persecution under the guise of a Soviet police officer, his job as a factory construction worker. The stories about situations in the past are reproduced using the actions of contemporary characters: contemporary anarchists, officers of the New Police, students and workers. The filming took place at the locations of particular historical events, in Poltava, Hadiach, Kharkiv and Bohodukhiv.

True stories of Ukrainian migrant women in Europe, who tell us why they made their decisions to move and what their motivation was. Is the grass really always greener on the other side? And what is home, after all - is it four walls and a roof above your head, or a view from your window, a bench in the park, the smell of the city in the spring? Is it a place of strength which gives you a feeling of security and comfort, or is it a space that allows you to realise your creative ambition, or is it a person who accepts you as you are? Together with the protagonists, we move there and back again, between home and not-home, between the past and the present, between Ukraine and not-Ukraine, immersing ourselves in their worldviews and testing our own.

In 2015, local elections were held for city councils in Ukraine. The film's action takes place in Kyiv. Its protagonists are a young councillor who is just starting in his career, and a member of a major political force. Coffee and discussion on the one hand vs. barbecue and songs on the other. Which one would you choose?