Special Program Bulgaria 2022

Diorama

Director: Zoya Laktionova
Country: Ukraine

This melancholic film tells a story of a deserted Ukrainian beach that is currently mined and dangerous due to explosives under water. Images of the post-apocalyptic landscape are accompanied with a voiceover and personal memories of the locals and opinions of experts.

Train Kyiv – War

Director: Korney Gritsyuk
Country: Ukraine

"The Train: Kyiv - War" is a full-length documentary film directed by Korniy Gricyuk. The dramatic history of the Kyiv-Kostyantynivka train, with its passengers' unique fates, pain, memories, secrets, hopes, is a history of today Ukraine. Only 12.5 hours away from peaceful Kyiv is Kostyantynivka, a small industrial city in the eastern part of the country, immediately after which the front begins. This entire time people with different characters, social status, political views, and beliefs are traveling on the train side by side. They talk, debate, even quarrel, but speak to each other and go in a common direction. And what's important, they all want to get to peace. This film is the voice of ordinary people, the search for dialogue and the path to a common future, where everyone's voice will be heard.

Thus they will sing

Director: Diana Horban, Anna Yutchenko
Country: Ukraine

“Thus they will sing” is a movie-collage that interweaves human experiences, soromitski (shaming) songs and the flow of modern life.Soromitski (shaming) songs are traditional songs (spivankas) with erotic motifs, sung at weddings, vechornytsi (evening parties), and feasts. Although they were quite shameful to sing in everyday life, the songs were transmitting the man and woman behavior patterns. The tradition of creating the spivankas (these songs) still exists. Ostap Bohoslavets from Nadvirna town reinterprets the modern world of youth in his own spivankas.

Living Fire

Director: Ostap Kostyuk
Country: Ukraine 

An artistic documentary about the life of shepherds in the Ukrainian Carpathians, and the fate of traditional crafts against the background of modern changes. About a day-to-job work without weekends, or any right to show weakness. About the harmonious world we have lost in the search for comfort, and about the childhood we leave behind when we put on the roles of adults.

Chamur

Director: by Tetiana Stanieva
Country: Ukraine

Chamur is a tradition that 30-40 years ago was absolutely typical for the Bulgarian village of Krynychne (Ukraine). Residents of the whole village gathered together and mixed clay with straw to create mudbricks which later would serve as bricks to build their houses, make their homes.

SIn 2019, residents from all over Krynychne get together for Chamur to start the construction of an ethnographic museum in an authentic way.

On the land cursed with hard work by God, from dust born and into dust until they return, the people of Krynychne use the dust to make their bricks of happiness, finding their lost paradise for at least one day.

The Place of Power

Director: by Tetiana Stanieva
Country: Ukraine

Living in a foreign land, in a metropolis, far from her childhood home, the native of a unique Bulgarian village on the south of Ukraine comes home to her people, where lie her roots and her power, where the voice of ancestors, drowned out by globalisation and urbanisation, calls for her through the veterans’ memories.