The Gateway

Kyiv in the nineties, tainted by a serious economic collapse and rising crime. A group of kids boost the family budget by washing cars at a gas station whose proprietors make a living in a rather dodgy way. The story is narrated by the 13-year-old protagonist, who eventually discovers how much this society has affected him.

Personal videos from the phones, camcorders, cameras and GoPros of Ukrainian soldiers are woven into a surreal journey to the frontline of the war with Russia. The film shows a bizarre world whose laws are quite different from what we are used to. The behaviour is different, the relationships unfold differently and the humour takes on different notes. The heroes wake up and fall asleep, rejoice and cry, always feeling that the recording may end at any moment.

This lesson in political revelation focuses on the shooting down of the Malaysian passenger jet MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014. A meticulous, investigative exposé that lays bare the mechanisms of Russian warfare.

The film’s events take place on a single day: August 24, 2022, the day Ukraine celebrates the 31st anniversary of the renewal of independent statehood. The film combines places and people that best capture the country’s wartime spirit. The locations are: the relatively safe cities of Kyiv and Lviv; the cities under daily missile fire of Kharkiv and Mykolaiv; a trench at the frontlines near Donetsk; and the beaches of Odesa. The film presents a day in the life of a beach police patrol, a woman anti-tank missile operator, a water delivery driver, a mortar unit soldier, a rapid assault unit soldier, a 14-year-old pub janitor, an artist and a former member of parliament. Together, these people and places create an engaging mosaic of a day in the life of Ukraine.

In 2014 Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine turns hot. An engineer, actor, soccer coach and florist volunteer to fight on the front line. Unaware of the pivotal role they will play in the war, they discover the meaning of true leadership.

Sergey and Sveta live in Chornobyl. He is a truck driver at a radioactive waste plant while she works at a radioactive decontamination station. Their work and life are dictated by one unchangeable rhythm.

This film plays out in Ukraine on a single day: March 14, 2022, the 2,944th day of the Russian-Ukrainian War. In the last few weeks, intense warfare has surreally mixed places and people and created a post-apocalyptic dimension revealing new qualities and roles. Thousands of Kyivans have moved to live in subway stations. The capital city's previously calm suburbs have been transformed into battle zones of destruction and looting by Russian occupiers. People no longer live according to "workdays" or "weekends," counting instead the number of days since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine... The film presents this day in the lives of a pop music star, video engineer, historian, art restorer, polar researcher, and pensioner, who were all forced to radically change their lives.

The film takes place in Kyiv during the day. Daniel Pritulyak, serving foreigners as guide, invents a route for the Americans on the life of an obscure but talented poet Danila Pritulyak.

He lives alone. He has nothing but a small house at the road. An old man loves to seat at the threshold and smoke a pipe. There are no neighbors for many miles around. Guests at his house are rare occurrence. But once a big black jeep appears near his house...

In the suburbs of the city a 7-years old boy disappears. After months of fruitless searches the boy's older sister decides to take the deal over. She is confident that she knows who kidnapped her brother. Is this enough to justify a terrible revenge?

Twelve young filmmakers made this the guiding principle of the featured documentary film. They mingle amongst the demonstrators on Independence Square and in the Donetsk region, shooting a "Chronicle of Civil Protest", a kaleidoscope of voices, opinions and events which bears witness to the circumstances surrounding solidarity and struggle. The viewer observes the Ukrainians at first hand, experiencing how a hard-pressed society becomes more militant and slides ever deeper into the abyss of civil war.

The film tells the story of several volunteers, soldiers of the International Legion of the General Staff of the Unified Armed Forces, a unit called Ronin Team. During their service, the soldiers become true friends: they work, study and rest together. However, a time of trials for the courage and skills of the legionnaires comes. The hot summer months are not easy for them. And not all recruits can withstand the high pace of training and service. Meanwhile, troubling news of the Russian offensive comes from the front.

It was a common habit in Soviet schools to draw the intimate organs on all portraits in textbooks.

80th years of the 20th century. The country is embraced by the "struggle" for "perestroika" and "glasnost", in Afghanistan - the height of the war, where hundreds die eighteen-year-old boys. Their peers, Denis, have little impact on the social problems of an agitated country. A newly-made student at the Institute of Cinematography - in euphoria and wine hops ... One night he encounters a strange, mysterious stranger and falls in love with her until unconscious ... Soon Denis learns that the lover is married and older than he. Elizaveta Tenetska - a famous director, almost a legend, she is talented and bold with authority. On Denis's passion, she answers with the icy cold...

An absurd story reflecting contemporary social problems in Ukraine, told in the century-old language of cinema, linking modernity and traditional Soviet socialist realism. Classical imagery imitates an old ideology contradicting the author’s worldview revealing the roots of reality’s distortion in this post-Soviet ambience showing that cultural, political and economic problems are knotted in military conflict.