Vadym Ilkov

A series of odd coincidences has left Lukas, an interpreter for an OSCE military checkpoint inspection tour, stranded near a small southern Ukrainian steppe town. With nowhere to turn, this city boy finds shelter at the home of a colorful local named Vova. With Vova as his guide, Lukas is confronted by a universe beyond his imagination, one in which life seems utterly detached from any identifiable structure. Fascinated by his host and his host's daughter Marushka, with whom he is rapidly falling in love, Lukas’s contempt for provincial life slowly melts away and sets him on a quest for a happiness he had never known could exist.

January, 2022. Long-time neighbours and miners Serhiich and Pashka live in a small village in the Donbas. Their lives would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that they are located in a grey zone at the heart of the conflict between Russian and Ukrainian forces. They are neutral arbiters, frequently hosting members of one army or the other, each fully aware of what their neighbour is doing. But as fighting continues and resources diminish, both men know they must connect with a ravaged world beyond their homes.

The city of Mariupolis is by the Azov sea. It is also on the river Kalmius. Most of the city’s residents, half a million according to the last census, are working for the steel factory and do fishing, for leisure or food, in between shifts. The orthodox church towers above the city and its newly build bronze domes are sitting next to it, waiting to be donned. A tent near by is sheltering a crying icon, which receives a steady flow of visitors.

Bakhmut, a small city in East of Ukraine, becomes an example for the dichotomy between the Soviet past and the (western) future. The precarious, war-driven landscape and the dreams of financial stability dissolve in the remains of the leisure culture from the past. A short film about the decommunization processes in the East of Ukraine. It reflects how the changes of monuments and regimes affect human beings in their everyday life. Until it finds the culmination of cultural and political borders in one product: the Soviet Champagne. The precarious, war-driven landscape of East-Ukraine and the dreams of financial stability dissolve in the remains of the leisure culture from the past.

Tolik, an openly gay bohemian singer/artist in the Ukrainian underground scene, is raising his niece Katya, a stubborn little girl who has taken to calling him Dad. Her mother, Anya, is both at the heart of the film and almost doomed to the fringes, adrift between solitude and stays in a psychiatric hospital.

In the wild steppes of southern Ukraine, a young nature researcher named Yura is looking for an endangered species of groundhog but instead witnesses a crime. Eager to expose the truth, Yura takes his photo evidence to the local newspaper's editorial office. However, he quickly realizes that nobody there cares about pursuing justice. While a big war is looming over the horizon, Yura's naive worldview is splintering in a storm of fake news, rigged political elections, and mysterious cult rituals. On his quest, the hero is about to find out who he really is-an endangered species of a good man or just a loser?

May 2014. Serhiy Zhadan, Oleksiy Vorsoba, Vlad Kreymmer, and Olha Mykhaylyuk have gathered in Mstsyhovsky’s estate (Seleznivka village), near the town of Alchevsk, to work on the musical and literary production entitled ‘Punctuation’. Everything is going on in waltz time.

Puppets, like obedient actors, usually execute all the wishes of their puppeteer. But sometimes, they behave strangely. Showing how people are changed by the influence of circumstances, forces and events.

Animation about a person whom society is constantly trying to "mold" to its own taste: at home, at school, at work. How do you put an end to this pressure and finally take on your own shape?

Seventeen-year-old Alina is in love with an imposing Frenchman. Suddenly, she loses her sense of humor. But not for long.

Young couple are spending one of the last nights together. Their relationship is almost over. He is going to leave Ukraine and start work in Poland. She is on the way to her new life in Kyiv. They try to talk, but the communication breaks down. Everything they are left with is emptiness. In the middle of the night, someone knocks on their door. Again and again. When they come to the door, there's no one there. But the knocking continues.

This film portrays a child's fantasy - naïve and absurd. A girl gets too excited while playing in her room and suddenly finds herself in a world made of paper and plasticine.

Before becoming an animator Anatolii Surma studied to be a tractor driver, and even worked in a regional road service office. His passion for animation began with The Simpsons and South Park. And while American TV series are generally created by huge studios, the distinctly recognizable characters that make up this whole absurdist world come from the hand of an amateur artist from a village in Khmelnytskyi oblast (province). Anatolii Surma never writes scripts for his cartoons. The ones he does write end up in the oven. This is a documentary about the author of the visual identity of Docudays UA Festival 2021 that reveals the secrets behind his creative process, the source of ideas and the inspiration for Anatolii Surma.

Hunting for the "Shaheds", the fighters of the mobile fire groups lead a nocturnal lifestyle. Waiting for the target in the dark, being ready to fire throughout the night, is a grueling routine that lasts more than one year, and smoke breaks after sleeping almost all day are a brief opportunity to bask in the rays of the evening sun.

The combination of poetry, music and visual imagery creates a new organic body which audience look closely to. The film-concert and adaptation of the performance "RozdIlovI" (aka Divided or Divisional) - a cult multidisciplinary project of the art agency ArtPole.

From the Ground Up is an example of how several people from civilian professions created an effective combat unit, building it on “disciplined initiative” and without “absurd subordination.” A unit in which combat missions can be carried out without losses.

This documentary is a portrait of several residents in a remote region of Ukraine. They dream of sunken treasures, sing in a village choir, fight raiders and design coffins for themselves - in short, they live a normal Ukrainian life.