The Ukrainian Argument

Year 2015. Hanna (mother) and Darka (girlfriend) are united by the memories of Danya, who died in 2014 on the Maidan. Hanna's life path went from a Maidan activist in 2004 to a high-level government official. Through the relationship between the two women, it turns out that Hanna was associated with the corruption that led to mafia revenge in Ukraine in 2010, and ended up the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. Hanna is increasingly convinced that her personal actions are linked to her son's death.

Soviet Union film based on the Ernest Thompson Seton story "Biography of a Silver Fox".

The mice people live in an enormous theatre, expectantly awaiting the ambiguous show by Josefina.

A film-play based on the play by Edward Albee (translated by Vitaly Vulf, Igor Kochnov).

A group of nine-graders are trying to start a kolkhoz of their own.

Woland from Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, the guide at the Bulgakov Museum, little Mikhail on his own, and his nanny, united in a single narrative in this experimental documentary inspired by the biography of the writer. To approach this mysterious oeuvre the film combines the uncombinable. Re-enactments at Bulgakov’s house in the Podil neighbourhood are met with excerpts from films by Griffith, Lubitsch and Duvivier. The heady mix of storytelling techniques makes this film a hypnotising dream, confounding like the work of the writer himself.

Sparked by the aftermath of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, Ukrainians began a series of protests against fraud and towards genuine democracy. History remembers it as the Orange Revolution, and here Sergii Masloboishchykov interrogates its foundation and motivations. By filming miners, villagers and students across Ukraine, the film maps a geography of the vast country that bridges the gap between East and West. Together they create a political argument for Ukrainian society, which, as the film states clearly, is a source of power.

Based on Wolfgang Goethe's poem "Forest King". Farewell to children's dreams about the perfection of the world and the permanence of nature. The film has three main characters: the boy Oleksii and his parents, Andriy and Oleksandra. And someone Maxim, the king of the forest, the wind is the subject of secret admiration and fear of Oleksiy: "My dear, the king of the forest is talking to me: he promises gold, pearls and joy" - "Oh no, my baby, you didn't hear that: that wind, waking up, the leaves swayed."

It turns out that Andrei Tarkovsky’s great-grandfather and Ivan Tobilevych (Karpenko-Karyi) have family ties. In this film, Vadym Skurativskyi, a curious Ukrainian cultural historian, recounts this unexpected phenomenon, taking us to the tailend of the 19th century. Sergii Masloboishchykov recreates photographs of relatives and imposes them with the films of Tarkovsky.

Galya Chekhon comes to the disappointing conclusion that the class has split, and on the eve of the last summer vacation, she attempts to create a friendly team. Enthusiastic about their dream of flying, the friends arrive at an abandoned glider airfield and decide to assemble a training glider without adult assistance in order to take to the skies...

For over a century ‘Carol of the Bells’ has been heard across the globe, but few know this song as ‘Shchedryk’, nor its Ukrainian origins. Own Voice delves into this history, and in so doing provokes a discussion about heritage and a changing world.

The protagonist has an existential hatred for a fellow soldier, who forces his friendship on him. Antipathy is replaced by mutual obsession, which has irreversible consequences. Masloboishchykov’s second film school project, which screened at Semaine de la critique, is based on the short novel Lagoftalm by the lesser-known writer, Dmitry Bakin. The military setting is conveyed through a combination of aggressive tensity and comic music, making it look and seem more like a prison or a madhouse.

Based on a short story by Franz Kafka, Masloboyshchikov’s debut film is a parable about the relationship between faith and salvation. A strange doctor comes to a neighbouring village to cure a sick child. The doctor thinks the boy should stop pretending, but the boy himself begs the doctor to let him die.

Ukrainian cameraman Sasha Shumovich was a shining light in Ukrainian national cinema, but in 1996 he was tragically shot and killed. During his short life he worked with Roman Balayan, Yuri Illenko and, above all, with Sergii Masloboishchykov. In honour of his memory, the director made this sensitive documentary that serves both as a farewell and a declaration of love.

Angela Slobodyan is a journalist who survived 31 days of Russian captivity during the occupation of the Kherson region. She is travelling to The Hague to testify about the aggressor’s war crimes. 
Combining telephone video evidence of the occupation, and interviews with survivors, Invasion is dedicated to Ukrainian acts of resistance. The women at the centre of the narrative not only demonstrated their heroism in resisting the occupiers, but also dared to give oral testimony about the unspeakable horrors they endured. 


“True art is the strength of its versatility and incompleteness,” says Daniel Lider, a great stage artist, teacher and citizen of Kyiv, the place where his art could express itself most freely. Mixing archive footage of Lider’s creative reflections with biographical facts narrated by his wife, the filmmaker keeps the film concise, bringing its cinematic form closer to the protagonist’s philosophy, as experimental as the television production of the 1+1 TV channel could allow.