Roman Khimei

Lena and Vitya, both in their early 20s, are two kids who now have a kid of their own. In the postnatal hospital room, like in limbo, their first team project is to wake their son for a feed. As the new parents repeatedly fail, they have to deal with the irreversible changes in their lives and with each other. Meanwhile, the diaper cake silently sits in the room, like a time bomb.

The stuff and visitors of one of the state institutions going through their daily routine. This buildings is full of mystery and secrets. Nobody can understand the issues they are trying to solve or to find the final destination of their corridor marathons. We can only trust and wonder how everything is organized here.

The documentary short depicts modern Kolomyia, where the cult of Austria-Hungary coexists with the post-Soviet reality: the developer hires a team of builders who, with thrift, brick by brick, dismantle old and uninhabitable real estate. Meanwhile, the artists invite fifteen-year-old Maksym to draw a walking route in Kolomyia: through the guide’s narration, the map of the city is transformed into a multi-layered historical palimpsest, where Soviet names are mixed with modern urban folklore and traditional Western Ukrainian piety, and “dog paths” are manifested by official intonation.

Valentina works in Lichtenstein. She lived in Kyiv until the age of 13. In 1996, during a hard transitive economic period in Ukraine, Valentina emigrated to Switzerland with her mother and stepfather. 20 years have passed.

During the political crisis in the Ukraine, young parents are going through a tough divorce. The mother wishes to emigrate with her child, but the father can't imagine living without his son.

The elite Kyiv Naval Political College operates in a city without access to the sea. The first Soviet aircraft carrier, the Kyiv, became the flagship of the Northern Fleet. The school's students, future political officers of the Soviet navy, go on a long navigation voyage; meanwhile, at their alma mater the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy opens. Focusing on the history of the institution's changing ideological functions, Under the Sign of Anchor explores the complex and sometimes paradoxical connections between war and culture, the Soviet past and the present. The film is based on materials from film archives from the time of the collapse of the USSR and the first years of Ukraine's independence.

Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei work with staged images that show their own bodies in the landscape of the Carpathian Mountains. Lying still in unnatural positions, dressed in trekking clothes, they seem to ask us: who is depicted on the screen?