I Did Not Want to Make a War Film

How far can you go on the way to your dream? Zhenia and Maks stopped going to the office and took up music seriously. Their band is called Reve ta Stohne. The guys do growl singing and dream of becoming real rock stars. However, for a start they need a music video and a studio album. And most of all they need money to pay for them. In search of income, Reve ta Stohne travels to the West.

Mom feeds little birds from the window of a panel building in Mariupol, Ukraine, and grows quince in her dacha garden near the battle line. Telling about her simple life, the woman shoots videos for her daughter, who lives in Kyiv and often doesn't pick up the phone.

A married couple of artists is creating a mosaic on the wall of a cultural space in Kyiv. They work in the upcycling technique, drawing inspiration from Kyiv's mosaics made during Soviet times.

Kyiv in 2022. A car races at breakneck speed through the city at dawn. Filmed from a subjective camera angle in a single unedited shot, this remale of Claude Lelouch's "C'était un rendez-vous" captures the emotions in a state of emergency caused by the war.

A young Orthodox priest, fed up with too much intolerance and hypocrisy at the Kyiv Pechery Lavra, decides to leave his service there. He finds for himself a new flock: gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender people as well as those living with HIV/AIDS. However, the official Orthodox Church denies them in the right to be Christians and homophobic society compels them to hide their sexual orientation. What has to happen to make the Church embower LGBT believers?

This is a documentary story of love, a story about the long-distance relationship that started in September 2014, while war in Ukraine and the economic crisis in Greece were taking a dramatic turn.

From late 1940s to late 1980s, doves were an obsession for boys in Kyiv. This is a film about how a hobby from childhood becomes a meaning of life.

This a playful film bringing us back to childhood, where everything started. It portraits seven girls who have grown up and who now "rock". They won't be talking about success, but they are the ones who know the rules of the game, and who also know how to violate them correctly. The film is a collective portrait of seven outstanding women in modern Ukrainian culture: writer Sofia Adrukhovych, cultural journalist Vira Baldyniuk, conductor Oksana Lyniv, artist Alina Kleytman, theatre director Tamara Trunova, cultural manager Yulia Fediv and film director Iryna Tsilyk.

Life flows in its everyday reality, but then suddenly something elusive changes its course. All that is left is the chance to plunge into memories where everything is preserved, as if in a museum.

At some point, one has to move out. A man decided to take care of his new house in advance.

Metro is a factory of rush for the passengers. Thousands, who do not hurry to break the circulation schedule, work to create the rhythm. What does the escalator controller think of, sitting inside her booth during the rush hour? How do the cashiers see us through the window of their own, separate world, decorated with flowerpots? What a metro worker in the small room with found items loses?

Mariupol is an industrial city on Azov sea. I went there as a young sailor 20 years ago. The places alive in my memory are mostly destroyed. The battle-line of the Russian-Ukrainian war is just nearby the city. In the night I can hear the bombing. However, I am looking for the miracle there.

This documentary about the Zhovten Cinema in Kyiv, which was constructed in 1931 and is one of the city's oldest, tells about how such spaces can function as cultural gathering points and the heritage of a country. The Zhovten Cinema in Kyiv is a unique opportunity to understand how a cinema can symbolize cultural resistance and identity. Zhovten (the name means October) becomes a cultural beacon and refuge, where the film becomes a bridge between past and present and local and global perspectives.

When Brovary village officially became a town, one third of its residents were communist. After 60 years and three revolutions such proportion didn’t change: thirty percent of its streets keep the names of the former empire.

The Petrivka book market is a place where everyone brings their old books they no longer need. The market sellers are people of the old school who still perceive books as a sort of currency.

Openly gay soldier Pavlo and his boyfriend Vlad become a public couple. Constant media attention takes a toll on their relationship. The film follows their year-long struggle to maintain intimacy under the weight of war, distance, and unhealed trauma.