"Free Spaces" sketches a new and transformative image of four major cities in Eastern Europe. In te post-communist urban settings of Tbilisi (Georgia), Yerevan (Armenia), Chișinău (Moldova) and Kiev (Ukraine), Ina Ivanceanu follows artists and activists as they reclaim public spaces and assert their freedom of expression. Occupying a cinema, reviving an old Soviet circus, converting a grim metro passage into a glamorous arena, and repurposing a defunct factory building into a cultural agora. By seizing and creatively transforming public spaces characterized by an abondoned past, today's new generation explores democratic means and freedom while also confronting pervasive neoliberal structures in their respective societies.
"Free Spaces" sketches a new and transformative image of four major cities in Eastern Europe. In te post-communist urban settings of Tbilisi (Georgia), Yerevan (Armenia), Chișinău (Moldova) and Kiev (Ukraine), Ina Ivanceanu follows artists and activists as they reclaim public spaces and assert their freedom of expression. Occupying a cinema, reviving an old Soviet circus, converting a grim metro passage into a glamorous arena, and repurposing a defunct factory building into a cultural agora. By seizing and creatively transforming public spaces characterized by an abondoned past, today's new generation explores democratic means and freedom while also confronting pervasive neoliberal structures in their respective societies.
2015-04-15
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Documantary
10.0Vignettes of life in the village Kryvorivnya in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, where once the novel "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" was written and later filmed and where, to this day, the passage of time has its own pace.
8.0Ten years ago, Volodymyr Zelensky was just one of the many faces on Ukrainian television screens. He became a star thanks to the 2015 satirical series Servant of the People, in which he played a history teacher who becomes president. Four years later, what began as fiction became a reality. This French documentary follows the transformation of a popular TV comedian into a statesman on the front lines of the Russian invasion. Archival footage, family photos, television appearances, and interviews with Zelensky and those closest to him create a multi-layered portrait of a man who always longed for a large audience. At the same time, the film places his personal development in the broader context of post-Soviet Ukraine, which is also searching for its own identity.
8.3A revealing and moving portrait of lives compromised by war, filmed exclusively by Ukrainian soldiers with extraordinary access to a tightly-controlled frontline.
7.8Filmmaker Olly Lambert spends two months on Ukraine’s southern frontline with volunteer special forces as they begin the push to capture Kherson. The film follows “Hummer”, an experienced military commander who now finds himself a chaperone to completely inexperienced forces on the frontline.
8.0The story of war, love and death that was documented by the immediate participants of events. Off screen and later on it are the two - a boy and a girl. He volunteered for the front; she went to the place just after the battle. He got into Ilovaysk cauldron, lost his closest brother-soldiers. She, while travelling along the ruined towns, strives to understand the essence of war and love. Both tell openly one another about their feelings during the war, escaping the cauldron, a try to live together after, and a common trip to the frontline.
1.0Since 24 February 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, several million refugees have already been taken in by Poles. In the Lublin region, near the Bug River, which marks the border with Ukraine and Belarus, farmers, shopkeepers, a photographer, and a teacher tell how their daily lives have been transformed by the outbreak of this war.
6.6In the wilderness of the Bucharest Delta, nine children and their parents lived in perfect harmony with nature for 20 years – until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city.
0.0A family with five children flees the war raging in their home village on the Russian border. They end up in Mshanets, a farming village on the other side of the country, remote and unknown. Here the family starts building a new home. At the same time, two documentary makers come to the village, looking for a story. In the Lymar family they find the ideal characters for their film. But one day, when the renovation of their house is almost finished, the family disappears. The filmmakers go in search of their characters and along the way they try to find an answer to the question: what does a person need to feel at home?
8.0As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war's atrocities.
10.0In 2014, the war begins. Immediately, a system of evacuation of the wounded and killed is being built, the outpost of which is the Dnieper - it is here that the first will be delivered, it is here that they are still received. Tatiana Guba has been coordinating the evacuation for 5 years. She is called "Mom Tanya". Thousands of people are grateful to her for her life. Serhiy Kryvorotchenko, director of the Dnipro Airport, has deployed a helicopter evacuation system since the beginning of the war. Eugene Titarenko, the film's director, in 2014-2015 was part of a volunteer medical battalion, communicates with the heroes of the film about the evacuation system. The viewer will see the whole way of saving lives, will be directly in the vortex of events and will understand how many people are involved in the process of saving one person.
0.0A theatrical documentary about Hrytsko Chubai, a genius of Ukrainian poetry, a connoisseur of literature, art and music and the brightest representative of Lviv underground culture of late 60s early 70s.
6.0One billion people on our planet—one in six—live in shantytowns, slums or squats. Slums: Cities of Tomorrow challenges conventional thinking to propose that slums are in fact the solution, not the problem, to urban overcrowding caused by the massive migration of people to cities. (Lynne Fernie, HotDocs)
8.0A 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.
5.7The documentary follows filmmaker Sean Langan's journey into the invader’s Russian side of the war in Eastern Ukraine. Sean heads into the Russian-occupied Donbas region to find out through the eyes of soldiers on the Eastern front and civilians coping with war in the streets how the conflict is affecting them.
0.0The residents of Bucha, Ukraine, are rebuilding their city from the rubble after surviving the horrors of Russian occupation. A newly married couple, a schoolgirl, a city official, and an elderly housewife have all endured the painful experiences of war, yet they manage to hold onto hope and solidarity. But how do you rebuild in the wake of growing trauma, especially with war still raging in your country? As time hopes for a peaceful life fade, they must grapple with mounting tensions within their communities. Shot over a three-year period, the film is a follow-up to When Spring Came To Bucha, as five protagonists navigate the complex terrain of inner conflicts, trauma, and a longing for justice, posing questions about the future of a society at war.
10.0In January 2025, experimental jazz duo Myshko Birchenko and Yevhen Puhachov, members of Hyphen Dash, travelled to Kramatorsk without any pre-made drafts or demo recordings to use music as a vessel to capture the emotions present in a place on the edge of a battle for survival and explore the therapeutic nature of music and improvisation in the brutal reality of war. They packed all the equipment into a car, drove 700 kilometres from Kyiv to the frontline city Kramatorsk, and turned one of many basements which serve as shelters into a makeshift recording studio. As a result, they recorded over 300 minutes of music, which were eventually distilled into a 90-minute album.
6.8The story of six young people addicted to heroin in Sofia, Bulgaria.
9.0Ukrainian musicians of all genres, from metal to opera, transform their passion for music into devotion to their country in this moving documentary. Beginning on the very first day of the Russian invasion, Soldiers of Song documents how the lives of its cast of Ukrainian musicians have irrevocably changed and how they use their musical talents to support themselves and their communities. Using shocking footage from the frontlines, this film reminds us not only of the ongoing tragedies that continue to happen during this war, but also of the resilience of Ukraine and its cultural forces. Here music functions not only to lift the spirits of the soldiers, but also as a cultural export to raise awareness of the war, a tool for raising humanitarian and military funds, and a valuable cultural artifact for everyday Ukrainians to rally around and protect. The musician’s commitment to their craft reminds us of the real power art has and the impact of beauty under catastrophic circumstances.
0.0ANDRO DADIANI's political performances dissect the oppression by state and church in Georgia and conquer Tbilisi's urban spaces. As a queer, non-binary protest and performance art figure, their identity remains a secret. The danger of open resistance is too great.