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Ukrainian Feature Film Competition 2021
Train Kyiv – War
Director: Korney Gritsyuk
Country: Ukraine
Only 12.5 hours separate peaceful Kyiv and Kostiantynivka, a small industrial town in the east of the country, immediately behind which the front begins. This entire time people with different characters, social status, political views, and beliefs spend side by side on the train. They communicate, argue, even quarrel, but talk to each other and move in the same direction. And they all wish for peace. This film is the people’s voice, the search for the dialogue and the path to a common future, where every voice will be heard.
Seagull flight
Director: Yevhen Zhitnikov
Country: Ukraine
I vacationed in Azov Yalta many years ago, it was a popular and happy place. Now it hurts to see his abandoned buildings. Nature is changing for the worse, and people are leaving this area.
The Building
Directors: Tatjana Kononenko, Matilda Mester
Country: Ukraine, Germany
In the east of Ukraine stands Derzhprom – the House of State Industry. Being built in 1925 – 1928, this building was designed to embody the idea of communism. Once it was a model of the avant-garde movement, but now it seems almost forgotten. Derzhprom is a kind of time machine. Space and time there are inseparable. “The Building” balances between the classic documentary of observation and experimental cinema. There are almost no dialogues in it – it is rather a poem of moving images. Using a variety of materials, including archival footage from the 1920s, the film reflects on how the past and present, movement and time relate to the static nature of architecture.
Moustache Funk
Director: Oleksandr Kovsh
Country: Ukraine
In the late sixties of the last century, after a period of the “Thaw”, the USSR started creating musical groups designed to become analogues of Western rock bands. They were called VIA – “vocal and instrumental ensembles”. The next decade was the “golden” era of Ukrainian pop music.
Ancestral Code
Director: Volodymyr Lutskyi
Country: Ukraine, Belarus
The documentary “Ancestral Code” is a study of the roots of the Ukrainian people, the search for their identity by studying the melody of the Slavic ethnographic heritage. Now many people talk about brotherhood, spiritual intimacy, kinship. We want to analyze the connection between the neighboring peoples of Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus and Poland through music and folklore.
A Sunday in Strasbourg
Director: Lana Berndl
Country: Ukraine
On Sunday, 1943, on a day off, Martha secretly wants to go with her French prisoner friend to Strasbourg. In the morning, Ivan leaves the yard of the German owner and goes as an “ostarbeiter” to the East, in the direction of his homeland. The Italian resistance frees Nicholas from the forced labor camp and leads him to a detachment of Garibaldi. What will happen to them next? War knows no regrets, but memory is also merciless. Victims of two dictatorships: Hitler and Stalin, with a memory that never dies ...
Weaving Way
Director: Lesia Voroniuk
Country: Ukraine
A full, bright, and inspiring documentary about folk weaving as a part of the Ukrainian cultural heritage. “Weaving Way” is a story about Ukrainian identity, understood through the aesthetics of various weaving products and their use in rituals. The tape consists of 8 episodes, each of which tells about a variety of folk weaving (“Polotno”, “Rushnyk”, “Namitka”, “Plakhta and obhortka”, “Kraika”, “Lizhnik”, “Gunia”, “Kylym”).
Olha’s Italian Diary
Director: Olena Fediuk
Country: Ukraine
Olha is a migrant woman in Naples, whose life is full of turning points enough to fill up a few telenovelas. “Olha's Italian Diary” is an intimate look at one of the contemporary taboo topics: intimate live of the migrant women away from home. Will Olha be able to give Naples a chance and find a real feeling among the routines of her transnational life?
The last Austrians
Director: Lukas Pitscheider
Countries: Austria, Ukraine
In a remote village in the Carpathian forests, forgotten by the outside world, the last Austrians of Ukraine wrestle with the question of whether they should turn their backs on their homeland.
Above ground
Director: Somar Afif Agha
Countries: Ukraine, Syria
The documentary sheds light on Syrian history in the context of its civilizational development and formation over many centuries, sharpens the viewer's attention to the changes in public opinion that have taken place over time. To reveal social processes, the author uses a special monologue method, and the vision itself is realized by combining the internal analysis of the hero of the film and its director, who returns to Syria and sees his country after a long absence differently, than it was before the war.
The film shows the destruction and vandalism caused by terrorists in many archeological, religious and residential areas of the country, which became dangerous for the population, especially in late 2015 and early 2016 – the most difficult phases of the war on Syrian soil.
The director conveys his inner experiences in the process of revealing the conflict between human feelings and presenting realistic scenes of destruction in Syria because of the terrorism in cities, villages and even the destruction of archeological sites; comparing it to those areas that were not destroyed and functioned during this time. Despite the war, its brutality, the author emphasizes the resilience of the Syrian man as the highest social value.
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