Sirs and Misters

Three months of revolution. From indignant protest to national unity. From pots on their heads to batons and body armor. From the euphoria of victory to the mourning of the fallen Heavenly Hundred. Revolution as an explosion of revived dignity, as the euphoria of freedom, as the pain of awareness at the cost, as the birth of the modern history of Ukraine. This year we have decided not to have an opening film, because all our attention is focused on the changes taking place in our country today. We have asked the directors who filmed the Ukrainian protests to share their best shots with us. The episodes of these upcoming films about the Euromaidan were formed in a kaleidoscope of revolution, which needs no comment. We offer you a chronicle of the Ukrainian protest. Experience the three months of fighting with us, feel and see the revolution through our eyes.

In the historic Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, despite the cruel war that has been raging since 2014 between the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and the Ukrainian government, people try to survive in the rotten heart of chaos, where violence disguises itself as peace, propaganda becomes univocal truth and hatred reigns in the name of love.

What does the violent heart of revolution feel like? As the anger and hatred glow white hot is there a language its players use to speak to one another? And what becomes of the gun toting authorities when their fiefdom is destroyed, nobody is any longer afraid, and all things are ablaze? Just some of the questions addressed in this visceral documentary from Maidan square in the violent Ukrainian winter of 2013-14.

White winter blizzard covers everything. We can rely now only on saints, on our prayers. The future has sailed away, with us left behind. Astray, we did not board the magic ship. The task at hand is simple — not to perish in the fog, not to die from the cold, not to get trapped under the ice. Not to fall in our own snares. Or are we all in one big trap anyway? Running around in a small circle, counting those who vanished.

Tolik, an openly gay bohemian singer/artist in the Ukrainian underground scene, is raising his niece Katya, a stubborn little girl who has taken to calling him Dad. Her mother, Anya, is both at the heart of the film and almost doomed to the fringes, adrift between solitude and stays in a psychiatric hospital.

Vasyl is a former ski jumper, who now works as a coach at the ski jumping school for children in the Carpathians. He is a loner, and sports is his whole life. Zhenya is Vasyl's favorite trainee. For five years he spent lots of energy making her a champion. With her success, his dreams can come true. When the girl grows up, she decides to try in another area of life not connected to sports. Vasyl's work seems to no longer make sense. But he finds the strength to start all over again.

A tragicomedy about an amateur theater in Volyn. Seeking to overcome his personal crisis, a renowned stage and screen actor Petro returns from the capital city to his native village to create a theatre with his fellow villagers, thus proving to himself what he is still capable of. After a decade of fame, a small troupe is tired. It is increasingly difficult for the director to find actors for new theatrical productions. The choice falls on Chekhov's vaudeville for three actors. On stage - the director, the director's wife and the director's childhood friend, the head of the club. Summer heat. Serenity. Six months before the war.