Revealing Ukraine

Dobropillia is a town located in Eastern Ukraine: 70 km from the border where conflicts with the breakaway republics are raging on and people feel always like being on the verge of total war. The sheer uncertainty about the future pushes folks to cling on to their daily habits while trying to get along with the ever-shifting political landscape. A wide array of wildly diversified characters try to cope as good as they can with the hardships in their town. A death metal band keeps rehearsing daily. A teacher guides visitors through the story of the city. The wonders of a vibrating armchair are tested as a tool against stress and anxiety. An elderly lady who has lost her son tries to talk some sense into her fellow citizens urging them to accept peace.

A chronicle of the civil uprising against the regime of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych that took place in Kyiv in the winter of 2013/14. The film follows the progress of the revolution: from peaceful rallies, half a million strong in the Maidan square, to the bloody street battles between protesters and riot police.

Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred on the night of April 26, 1986, its causes and consequences are examined. In addition, a report on efforts to strengthen the structures covering the core of the nuclear plant in order to better protect the population and the environment is offered.

Armed with his brushes, the mural painter Gamlet Zinkivsky roams the streets of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, 20 km from the front line. The artist's initiative does not go unnoticed.

The movie explores the origin of the Ukrainian language and persecution of those who defended its authenticity. Using examples of other countries, creators of the film prove that a nation cannot exist without a language.

In the familiar surroundings of their everyday lives, they talk about things that matter to them, about experiences that move them, about first love and loss, hopes and fears. 13 adolescents from a school in Donbass which was destroyed during the war in Ukraine, and subsequently rebuilt, share themselves in front of the camera. 13 lives inhabiting an intermediary space, both emotionally and socially.

Brutto Nostra

Ilya Kabakov is considered one of the most important contemporary artists worldwide. Born and raised in the Ukraine in the period between Stalin and Gorbatschow he left the country in the 80s. In his Installations and his numerous paintings Kabakov creates a world of its own, which leaves the heaviness of socialist and post-socialist life far behind. The film links Ilya Kabakovs artistic spaces with insights into Russian everyday life, which itself sometimes appears like an installation by the artist.

Embedded journalist Mark Bartalmai shows the Ukrainian war from inside..

For the first time, this documentary includes two exclusive interviews with Vladimir Putin and full details about actions in Crimea during spring 2014. These events determined the history of modern Russia. The President talks frankly and openly about the challenges and risks that Russia faced during that time. This film provides the Russian view of the situation. It is impossible to form a complete picture of the world without it.

Second Chance tells a story of Ukrainian orphaned children and the Canadian volunteers who spend their summers working along side them. The film follows first time volunteer and filmmaker, Adriana Luhovy, as she learns about the children and becomes witness to their strengths and resilience. Converging in Yaremche in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, over 500 orphaned children come together from all over the country. At first quiet and fearful, they learn to trust one another and their counsellors. By countering heartbreaking statistics - 60% of orphaned girls are trafficked within the first year of leaving the orphanage; 50% of boys end up in jail; 10% commit suicide - the volunteers are dedicated to making a difference in the lives of orphaned Ukrainian children.

A Sniper’s War is a story of a sniper, whose anti-US views led him to join the pro-Russian rebels in the ongoing Ukrainian conflict—a primary source of tension between the United States and Russia. When social media becomes a communication platform to schedule sniper duels, Deki’s rival threatens to kill him. The New York-based filmmaker, Olya Schechter, obtains unprecedented access to military bases and front line battles to paint an intimate portrait of the complex and fascinating nature of a man walking the tightrope that often comes to the morality of war: is Deki a solder or a killer?

Chain-smoking artists, poets and playwrights were among the colourful array of intellectuals living in the ‘Slovo House’ in 1920s Ukraine. The communist paradise was built under Stalin's approval, but it quickly became a prison. The brutal Soviet regime spied on the inhabitants, destroying their eccentric way of life and sealing their fate. This fascinating film explores the extraordinary story of the building and its residents.

This documentary offers a glimpse into the life of an English neurosurgeon, Henry Marsh, situated in Ukraine, as we are exposed to the overwhelming dilemmas he has to face and the burden he has to carry throughout his profession.

30 thousand Hasidim journey to Uman in Ukraine to celebrate the Jewish New Year at the gravesite of Rebbe Nachmann. A Ukrainian far-right group erects a cross at the site of Hasidic prayers and builds a monument to Cossacks who slaughtered thousands of Jews and Poles in 1768.

This video documentary centers on the questions of civil liberties and cultural differences in a society beginning to open as one woman searches for her own ethnic roots, identity and family history in Ukraine. Issues of human rights, anti-Semitism, homophobia, feminism and a divided and economically-depressed country are encountered as Barbara Hammer, a feminist activist and pioneer of lesbian cinema, return to a “homeland” full of struggling as people search for a new post-glasnost identity.

Military people call such places "FRONTLINE", liquidators who worked at the Chernobyl nuclear station called it "ROOF COATING". It was the most contaminated, and therefore the most dangerous, place in the zone. The remains of the roof coating of the 4th reactor. The operation on decontaminating the roof lasted more than five months. We will tell about only two days. About the most important two days in the life of an explorer - dosimetrist Valeriy Starodumov. He participated in this operation until it was over. He himself came out to the roof and led people there. He himself planted the "victory banner" at the level of 75 meters, as the signal for the zone: the roof coating has been decontaminated! Now, 25 years later, Valeriy Starodumov comes back to the zone. Now Chernobyl is a tourist object. But not for him...

Documentary offers a look at the historical development, establishment and artistic transformations of the Ukrainian Circus as a cultural phenomenon of the 20 century.

Documentary follows five young Ukrainians from Donetsk suburbs, Luhansk camps, Mariupol block posts, Kharkhiv oligarch estates, and Maidan Square. Amid referendums, elections, and mass propaganda, their diverse backgrounds reveal how a new generation navigates values, dreams, and turmoil in Ukraine’s East–West crisis.

White winter blizzard covers everything. We can rely now only on saints, on our prayers. The future has sailed away, with us left behind. Astray, we did not board the magic ship. The task at hand is simple — not to perish in the fog, not to die from the cold, not to get trapped under the ice. Not to fall in our own snares. Or are we all in one big trap anyway? Running around in a small circle, counting those who vanished.