Dobropolye 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.
How do you cover a war in your own country? We spent two years with journalists from Ukraine's public broadcaster and saw how Russia's invasion transformed their profession and changed their beliefs. Broadcast on 5/4/2024
The film’s events take place on a single day: August 24, 2022, the day Ukraine celebrates the 31st anniversary of the renewal of independent statehood. The film combines places and people that best capture the country’s wartime spirit. The locations are: the relatively safe cities of Kyiv and Lviv; the cities under daily missile fire of Kharkiv and Mykolaiv; a trench at the frontlines near Donetsk; and the beaches of Odesa. The film presents a day in the life of a beach police patrol, a woman anti-tank missile operator, a water delivery driver, a mortar unit soldier, a rapid assault unit soldier, a 14-year-old pub janitor, an artist and a former member of parliament. Together, these people and places create an engaging mosaic of a day in the life of Ukraine.
"Revealing Ukraine" by Igor Lopatonok continues investigations on of the ongoing Ukrainian crisis following "Ukraine on Fire". In addition, it analyzes the current political backstage and its dangerous potential for the world.
Courage, love and loss. Young people risk their lives with self-funded missions to rescue families in Ukraine’s frontline towns. Told through their own words and unique first-person footage.
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.
This Rain Will Never Stop takes the audience on a powerful, visually arresting journey through humanity’s endless cycle of war and peace. The film follows 20-year-old Andriy Suleyman as he tries to secure a sustainable future while navigating the human toll of armed conflict. From the Syrian civil war to strife in Ukraine, Andriy’s existence is framed by the seemingly eternal flow of life and death.
There are things that are indescribable and unspeakable when the disasters that affect our lives are beyond comprehension. Certain fundamental experiences seem irreducible to any form of expression. So how do we convey their intensity? How do we put them into words? Here, we’re talking about the war inflicted on the Ukrainians for over a year. Daryna Mamaisur is Ukrainian and currently lives in Portugal. O Fumo do Fogo, somewhere between a film diary and an essay, sketches with admirable reserve a path towards the possibility of communicating.
Dmytro Komarov's documentary project The Year. Kharkiv Region. Dmytro Komarov will show Kharkiv in the first months of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. Viewers will hear the stories of people who found themselves in the epicentre of the brutal attacks: at the air defence base destroyed by a Russian missile, in the residential area of the city - Northern Saltivka - which was ravaged by shelling. The journalist will talk to those who played a key role in the liberation of the Kharkiv region. One of these people is Roman Hryshchuk, the commander of the 127th separate territorial defence brigade of Ukraine. He told us how the military practice of the past - using decoys in the form of dummies - helped to identify and destroy the occupiers. How did the full-scale war begin for Kharkiv? What plans did the enemy have for Kharkiv? What united people and gave them hope in the most difficult times? Find out in the documentary project "Year. Kharkiv Region".
Three juxtaposing stories taking place in Portugal, Austria and Cuba create an intimate and poetic portrait of the daily lives and struggles of the elderly in an unstable world, seen through the eyes of their grandchildren.
Deep in a forest by the Baltic Sea, a group of Ukrainian families come together to start the healing process with the help of golden retrievers and palamino horses at an animal therapy retreat. In the safety of the forest, the children’s memories of being illegally deported to Russia and their families’ struggles to rescue them are unraveled with the help of skilled and sensitive counsellors. The joy and humour the children discover during their time in the forest make it easy to forget that their stories are the reason the International Criminal Court recently issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. Nearly 20,000 abducted children remain in Russian institutions.
This story is a journey through time, starting from the 1950s with the creation of the first computer by Ukrainian engineers, and continuing until the present day when the IT sector has become not only a powerful industry but also an important front in the war against Russia.
Reality in Ukraine was divided into two periods - before the war and after. Every citizen tries to be useful in this national resistance. Ukrainians change their professions and adapt to the needs of wartime. In art workshops, sculptors make anti-tank obstacles. Silent figures of Ukrainian figures, angels, Cossacks and multiple copies of Jesus Christ, like a terracotta army, froze in anticipation of new creations. Masters weld metal defenses for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
A documentary exploring Lev Parnas' involvement in the Trump-Ukraine scandal that resulted in the former president's impeachment, detailing Parnas' unexpected entanglement with Trump and Giuliani, leading to his incarceration.
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.
The historical documentary film Felix tells the story of a Ukrainian hero who was an aerial reconnaissance man. The project combines authentic accounts of the formation of Ukraine's independence, from 1991 to the present day. The film reveals all the key events that encourage the viewer to reflect on the cost of the people's struggle for independence from the appetites of Muscovy for centuries and continues to defend it to this day.
Checkpoint Zoo documents a daring rescue led by a heroic team of zookeepers and volunteers, who risked their lives to save thousands of animals trapped in a zoo behind enemy lines in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.
On February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war has since killed thousands, displaced millions and destroyed entire cities. Despite international appeals for Volodymyr Zelensky, and his family, to be evacuated to a safe location during the opening days of the invasion, the 44-year-old president stayed in Kyiv with his defence forces. It's hard to imagine how this bright, comedic, family man, has ended up in one of the most dangerous positions in the world, with a giant target on his back. 10 months on, and still fighting from the ground, Zelensky has been named TIME Person of the Year 2022. With comparisons to Winston Churchill, as a war time leader, his impact is undeniable. Utilising his acting skills he is embodying everything it means to have the spirit of Ukraine.
"Stronger than Arms", is the history that heats our hearts up with the memory of events and people, who from the time of Euromaidan to the war in the East were building a new Ukraine.