Violoncello

Two warriors of the guerrilla movements, the one from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the other from the Polish Home Army (AK), narrate on the atrocities of German and Soviet occupation in 1939-1946, argue about the mutual harms of the past, and reveal what made them unite after all they've been through.

A simple-minded Ukrainian worker Levko inherits his uncle's flourishing mill business. The sudden and unexpected fortune consequently reveals Levko's furious crave for money. He starts with laying hands on the tavern of the missing Jew Yankel, who was snatched for cupidity by the devil Khapun. In the blink of an eye Levko becomes a village usurer, he fuddles peasants, he dilutes horilka, he wants and squeezes money from everyone. But the unruly desire to be rich leads to a complete loss of compassion, friends, and love. And the main question is how the hero's ordeals will end - will the real feelings triumph or will the greed prevail.

Immortalised as one of the most scintillating and uplifting Christmas songs, 'Carol of the Bells' adapted from a popular and loved Ukrainian folk melody, came to represent the spirit of brotherhood and unity all over the world. The peaceful and neighbourly existence of three families, Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish, sharing a large house, musical evenings and merriment in the city of Stanislaviv in the years preceding and post war, is shattered. First in the Soviet occupation and the persecution of the Polish family, then, by the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and the decimation of the Jewish family. Sacrificing their lives the Ukrainian family manage to save their neighbours' children and their own daughter. Death and loss come to these families, but the healing power and joy , and a promise that the Future Will Not be Cancelled which "Carol of the Bells' evokes will be everlasting.

The meaning of the main character's life is the cultivation of flowers. His fragile harmony is disturbed by the sudden death in the neighborhood and the same sudden appearance of a young woman. To dampen his growing interest in his new neighbor, the hero tries to concentrate even more on his plants, which for him are the model of an ideal world. But his train is irresistible.

During 1944-1946, more than 480,000 Ukrainians had been forced to leave the territory of modern northeastern Poland— Kholmshchyna, Nadsiannia, Pidliashshia, and Lemkivshchyna. The eyewitness tells the story of deportation and recalls terrible conditions in which she and other Ukrainians were taken from Poland to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.

If a river could speak, it would probably say: «I'm sick of your negligence of a self-proclaimed «lord of nature». You are actually helpless. Fear turns you against one another when the weather forecast mentions a tsunami. This calamity has long been in your heads. What else explains the fact that you're cutting down forests on slopes, which can deter a flood, and draining swamps, which can retain water and regulate climate, and then dying by thousands because of the impact of floods and droughts?

The nearest town to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone is Ivankiv, home to about 8,000 people. From February 24 to April 1, Ivankiv was under Russian occupation. The occupiers bombed the museum of Maria Prymachenko, a world-renowned local artist. Despite air raid alarms, attacks by Russian drones and missiles, power outages, and the ongoing threat from neighboring Belarus, the town continues to live. Our story is about the residents of Ivankiv — more precisely, the children who study at the Maria Prymachenko School of Arts, where they practice music and visual arts. While creating paintings in the style of the famous artist, the children share their experiences of surviving the occupation and how the war affects their lives.

The documentary explores how nature has acted as a barrier against radiation and how the ecosystem of the Chornobyl exclusion zone has changed 40 years after the accident, with the zone itself becoming an international research site. One of the film’s focal points is the wetlands, which were drained in the 1950s and 1960s and now pose an increased fire hazard and risk of radionuclide dispersion, as well as facilitating enemy infiltration into these territories.