Darya Bassel

CHARBON depicts how Europe was built on fossil fuels over the past 100 years. And how it was torn apart by wars that were the result of these same fossil fuels. During 3 trips to Ukraine, Italy and Iraq, filmmaker Manu Riche explains how he and his French-German family are inseparably connected to the fate of the Iraqi filmmaker and refugee Hayder Helo.

A temporary house for abandoned children near the front line in eastern Ukraine is run by a small group of social workers determined to provide comfort and safety. It may be humble and somewhat run-down, but this house is filled with love and offers up to nine months of refuge to kids whose fate will be determined by the system. During this short time, the caretakers try to nurture within them a sense of stability and normalcy.

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.

A journey through Ukraine that reveals the banality of evil behind the Russian invasion with the shocking juxtaposition of two realities: the Ukrainians who have been suffering and resisting the war violence, and the Russian military, and civilians, who have been perpetrating it.

Another visit to the doctor happens to be unsuccessful for Maria. Her marriage is on the verge of destruction. Deceiving her husband, she gradually realizes that she lives in a lie, and increasingly retreats into herself to look for forgotten answers.

The Vilnius Palace of Marriage, opened in 1974, is highly reminiscent of Soviet-era modernist architecture in Ukraine. Mariia’s dance represents her emerging womanhood in a space traditionally meant for the initiation ritual of two people. An episode of the anthology project “Dance + City”, which bridges contemporary dance and architecture across Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, France, and Ukraine. The film was screened both as an episode within the anthology and through independent festival and award distribution.

“I have been working hard this summer. Begged for alms, collected metal, stole. I don't have a father. The mother was asleep. I left home and started living on the street. In the basement. I have friends. We live together, steal, sniff glue, drink vodka. Then they got hooked on the needle. Now we all walk badly and hardly talk. We are sick bitch people. And you?" Film-immersion. For several months, the filmmakers lived with a pack of homeless human children and observed different aspects of their lives.

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.

After spending months as a prisoner in Donbas, Ukrainian aerial reconnaissance expert Lilia returns home to her family. But the trauma of captivity continues to torment her and surface in dreamlike ways. Something growing deep within Lilia will not allow her to forget, yet she refuses to identify as a victim and will fight to liberate herself.

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?

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.

Reflective observations of Ukraine in wartime are interwoven with eye-witness accounts to contemplate the ultimate tragedy: the normalization of war.

In a series of letters to her young son, a mother, soldier and filmmaker documents her thoughts from the Ukrainian frontline.

The 37-year-old man is working for a Corporation, which is engaged in illegal occupation of rural land. Leaving for another "object", he discovers a huge unfinished cathedral at the infinite field. He needs to decide what to do with the cathedral, as well as to subdue a farmer who rightfully owns the land.

Iryna Tsilyk: “Red Zone is an animated documentary film essay in which I attempt to reflect on the question of what it means to be a woman in times of war. The Red Zone is a dangerous area on the frontline where hostilities take place. However, it is also a place of insecurity for those who live in the shadow of a constant threat. We are a generation of people with emergency backpacks on our shoulders. As a modern woman, the wife of a soldier, a mother, a filmmaker, a poet, a friend to many militaries, and a great-granddaughter of those who suffered in other wars and Stalinist prisoner camps, I have something to say about the feeling of insecurity“.