Воювати музикою: історія оркестру Луганської філармонії

A chronicle of the civil uprising against the regime of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych that took place in Kyiv in the winter of 2013/14. The film follows the progress of the revolution: from peaceful rallies, half a million strong in the Maidan square, to the bloody street battles between protesters and riot police.

Film made by activists who lived for a month in the Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona after the start of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

While the armed conflicts on the Ukrainian front have become a traumatizing everyday reality, out of necessity new structures of care have developed among Ukrainian society. As a contemporary document, this film looks at unseen moments of care work - continuous attempts to restore respect and security to people who have been violently deprived of them.

In 2022, Mantas Kvedaravičius went back to Ukraine, Mariupol, at the heart of the war, to be with the people he had met and filmed in 2015. Following his death, his producers and collaborators have put all their strength into continuing transmitting his work, his vision and his films. Also a PhD in anthropology, Mantas Kvedaravičius wished to testify as a filmmaker as far as possible from the agitation of the media and the politicians. With huge force and sensitivity, Mariupolis 2 depicts life as it continues amidst the bombing and reveals images that convey both tragedy and hope.

There are things that are indescribable and unspeakable when the disasters that affect our lives are beyond comprehension. Certain fundamental experiences seem irreducible to any form of expression. So how do we convey their intensity? How do we put them into words? Here, we’re talking about the war inflicted on the Ukrainians for over a year. Daryna Mamaisur is Ukrainian and currently lives in Portugal. O Fumo do Fogo, somewhere between a film diary and an essay, sketches with admirable reserve a path towards the possibility of communicating.

Deep in a forest by the Baltic Sea, a group of Ukrainian families come together to start the healing process with the help of golden retrievers and palamino horses at an animal therapy retreat. In the safety of the forest, the children’s memories of being illegally deported to Russia and their families’ struggles to rescue them are unraveled with the help of skilled and sensitive counsellors. The joy and humour the children discover during their time in the forest make it easy to forget that their stories are the reason the International Criminal Court recently issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. Nearly 20,000 abducted children remain in Russian institutions.

A profile of Putin, exploring his complicated relationship with Ukraine. Why does this neighbouring nation threaten his power and identity?

The story of war, love and death that was documented by the immediate participants of events. Off screen and later on it are the two - a boy and a girl. He volunteered for the front; she went to the place just after the battle. He got into Ilovaysk cauldron, lost his closest brother-soldiers. She, while travelling along the ruined towns, strives to understand the essence of war and love. Both tell openly one another about their feelings during the war, escaping the cauldron, a try to live together after, and a common trip to the frontline.

The film is about how the occupation has changed and sometimes broken the lives of people living on the peninsula. Hromadske journalist Natalia Humeniuk arrived in Crimea on the day of the so-called ‘referendum’ on 16 March 2014, where she talked to people in Bakhchisarai, Simferopol, Yalta and Sevastopol. Since then, the journalist has returned to the peninsula at least once a year: she talked about the first political prisoners, the beginning of repressions against Crimean Tatars, the economic conditions and everyday life of the residents of the occupied Crimea, and what it was like to be a Ukrainian in the occupied Crimea or even an activist of the ‘Crimea is ours’ movement who began to criticise the occupation administration. After 5 years, Hromadske journalists returned to the people whose stories were told in the first months of the annexation.

Five young Ukrainians discuss life following the Maidan Revolution of 2014. Not all fought in the Russian-Ukrainian war, but it, regardless, shattered their life plans. Representing 'Generation Maidan', they face the question of how to cope with experiences of violence, how to go on. A local theatre director produces Hamlet, wherein they can use Shakespeare’s tragic character as a mirror and face their traumas onstage. For them, 'to be or not to be' is not simply text but an existential dilemma with no clear answer.