Film Archive

Filmstill Boney Piles

Boney Piles

Terykony
Taras Tomenko
Spotlight on: Docudays UA 2022 2022
Documentary Film
Ukraine
2022
80 minutes
Ukrainian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

Toretsk in eastern Ukraine is marked by the decline of the coal industry: wasteland, rubble, scrap metal. In 2014, Russian separatists brought war into the region, destroying homes and families, including Nastya’s. The girl and her friends, all on the brink of adulthood, accept the decaying outskirts, gone to seed in the face of threat and depression, as normal. Taras Tomenko observes their small danced or sung escapes, their moments of obliviousness, sometimes their tears.

Sylvia Görke

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Taras Tomenko
Cinematographer
Misha Lubarskyi
Editor
Viktor Malyarenko
Producer
Volodymyr Filippov, Andriy Suyarko, Alla Ovsyannikova
Sound
Olha Havrylenko, Volodymyr Tretiakov
Score
Alla Zagaykevych
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
Filmstill Fragile Memory

Fragile Memory

Krykhka pam’yat
Igor Ivanko
Panorama Middle and Eastern Europe 2022
Documentary Film
Ukraine,
Slovakia
2022
85 minutes
Ukrainian,
Russian,
Polish
Subtitles: 
English

In the 1960s, the Soviet cinematographer Leonid Burlaka worked on films that went around the world for the Odesskaya kinostudiya in his native city of Odesa in the former Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Today he is eighty years old and diagnosed with Alzheimer’s; his memory is visibly fading. Filmmaker Igor Ivanko follows the traces left by his grandfather and discovers an archive of immense value in the garage.

Dozens of rolls of photo film, albeit almost decayed, are found between gardening and other tools. The grandson scans the material and shows it to his grandparents. Burlaka’s face brightens when he recognises familiar faces, but he can’t remember much. Ivanko realises that he has a treasure of historical dimensions in his hands. Leonid Burlaka began his career when many Soviet creative artists were struggling with censorship. When state repression eased in the mid-1960s, he had long established himself in his profession. The political change, however, was reflected in his works. Ivanko’s attempt to record his grandfather’s memories before they disappear forever comes too late. But he succeeds at making a film that looks back on fifty years of cinema and life in the USSR: a stirring portrait of the times and the family between emotion and information.
Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Igor Ivanko
Cinematographer
Igor Ivanko, Illia Yehorov
Editor
Igor Kosenko
Producer
Mariia Ponomarova, Alexandra Bratyshchenko, Igor Ivanko, Peter Kerekes
Sound
Karina Rezhevska
Score
Marek Piaček
World Sales
Clementine Engler
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
Spotlight on: Docudays UA 2022 2022
Filmstill Infinity According to Florian
Infinity According to Florian
Oleksiy Radynski
The hot button issue of pre-war Kyiv: the power of developers. Florian Yuryev’s architectural visions contrasts with the stubbornness of a businessman inspired by Donald Trump.
Filmstill Infinity According to Florian

Infinity According to Florian

Neskinchennist’ za Florianom
Oleksiy Radynski
Spotlight on: Docudays UA 2022 2022
Documentary Film
Ukraine
2022
70 minutes
Ukrainian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

The hot button issue of pre-war Kyiv: the power of developers. Oleksiy Radynski explores the opposition of an architect who designed one of the most significant buildings in Kyiv and the capitalistic cynicism that ruins the city’s uniqueness. Florian Yuryev’s philosophy of a galaxy’s mortality, of a “beautiful zero” we all are going to return to, contrasts with the ridiculous and dangerous stubbornness of a businessman inspired by Donald Trump.

Daria Badior

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Oleksiy Radynski
Cinematographer
Max Savchenko
Editor
Mykola Bazarkin
Producer
Lyuba Knorozok
Sound
Andriy Borysenko, Oleksandr Konoval
Score
Andriy Borysenko
World Sales
Clementine Engler
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
Media Name: 682e81af-369e-4b88-bb4d-889b88958488.png

kitchen.blend

cuisine.blend
Nataliya Ilchuk
International Competition Short Film 2021
Animated Film
France,
Ukraine
2021
15 minutes
French,
Ukrainian
Subtitles: 
English, German Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing

Click, click, she virtually recreates a cluttered, narrow kitchen on her computer. Lady Di smiles with creased photo edges from the refrigerator, a half-opened chocolate bar lies on the table. The technical-looking, detailed digital reconstruction runs like a fingertip along remembered images, tracing their nicks. The images feed off a blurred video in which the grandparents and their kitchen-cum-living-room live on – a nostalgic place in the distant Ukraine of childhood.

André Eckardt

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Nataliya Ilchuk
Producer
Nataliya Ilchuk, Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains
Sound
Yannick Delmaire
Animation
Paul Guilbert
Spotlight on: Docudays UA 2022 2022
Filmstill Mountains and Heaven in Between
Mountains and Heaven in Between
Dmytro Hreshko
Four paramedics in a mountain village at the beginning of the Covid pandemic go from house to house. They form the emotional core of this kaleidoscopic look at stories and tragedies.
Filmstill Mountains and Heaven in Between

Mountains and Heaven in Between

Mizh nebom ta goramy
Dmytro Hreshko
Spotlight on: Docudays UA 2022 2022
Documentary Film
Ukraine
2021
70 minutes
Ukrainian
Subtitles: 
English

Four paramedics in a distant mountain village at the beginning of the Covid pandemic go from one house to another, from measurements to diagnoses, from tired older women to drunk middle-aged men. Hreshko watches them closely: They get baptised, married and buried. Yet the ambulance team stays the same, does its job, and ultimately provides the emotional core of this kaleidoscopic view of people’s stories and tragedies.

Daria Badior

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Dmytro Hreshko
Cinematographer
Dmytro Hreshko
Editor
Viktor Malyarenko, Dmytro Hreshko
Producer
Polina Herman
Sound
Volodymyr Tret’yakov, Volodymyr Shchobak
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
Filmstill Photophobia

Photophobia

Photophobia
Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Slovakia,
Czech Republic,
Ukraine
2023
71 minutes
Ukrainian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

12-year-old Nikita and his family have been staying in an underground station in Kharkiv for weeks. The place promises protection from Russian attacks, but there is not much distraction down here. The glaring lights and provisionally furnished carriages create a surreal to dreary atmosphere, pets roam the aisles, an aging musician plays songs on his guitar.

Ivan Ostrochovský and Pavol Pekarčík condense the first months of the war in Ukraine into an oppressive but not hopeless narrative, because the station is also a place of encounters. Niki soon meets Vika, who is his age and who coaxes the lethargic boy out of his shell. Together they roam the underworld, but while Vika is permitted to go to the surface at least once in a while, Niki’s radius of movement ends at the stairs on which sunlight falls occasionally. And yet an outside exists which the two directors make visible by Super 8 shots scattered in between. They show a damaged Kharkiv: destroyed vehicles, a charred bed, provisionally protected monuments. “Photophobia” is a hybrid, introspective film that manages to find something like tender romance in an unreal situation.

Carolin Weidner

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík
Script
Marek Leščák, Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík
Cinematographer
Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík
Editor
Ivan Ostrochovský, Pavol Pekarčík, Martin Piga
Producer
Ivan Ostrochovský, Albert Malinovský, Katarína Tomková, Tomáš Michálek, Kristýna Michálek Květová
Co-Producer
Helena Osvaldová, Denis Ivanov, Jakub Mahler, Pavol Pekarčík
Sound
Dušan Kozák, Jakub Jurásek
Sound Design
Jakub Jurásek
Score
Roman Kurhan, Michal Novinski
World Sales
Michaela Čajková
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize, Leipziger Ring
Spotlight on: Docudays UA 2022 2022
Filmstill Plai. A Mountain Path
Plai. A Mountain Path
Eva Dzhyshyashvili
A family in the mountains, following their daily rituals, unmolested by the outside world. But even this supposedly quiet life is determined by the war in eastern Ukraine.
Filmstill Plai. A Mountain Path

Plai. A Mountain Path

Plai
Eva Dzhyshyashvili
Spotlight on: Docudays UA 2022 2022
Documentary Film
Ukraine
2021
75 minutes
Ukrainian
Subtitles: 
English

Eva Dzhyshyashvili shows us a family that lives in the mountains following their daily rituals. At first glance, it’s a simple, quiet life unbothered by the outer world. However, as the picture is revealed, we see that the grandfather was wounded in the east of Ukraine and listen to countless conversations about this war. The feeling that there is nowhere to hide from military aggression is starkly evident. But the ending provides a sliver of hope.

Daria Badior

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Eva Dzhyshyashvili
Cinematographer
Eva Dzhyshyashvili
Editor
Eva Dzhyshyashvili
Producer
Oksana Ivanyuk
Sound
Andrii Rohachov
Score
Erik Shved
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
Filmstill Pryvoz

Pryvoz

Pryvoz
Eva Neymann
Spotlight on: Docudays UA 2022 2022
Documentary Film
Ukraine
2021
72 minutes
Ukrainian
Subtitles: 
English

A sentimental journey through the main market in Odesa. Pryvoz is a place of recurring myth. It is mentioned in songs and books and is truly the heart of this disorienting city with a complicated history. Neymann looks at the inhabitants with empathy: lost souls in the bodies of humans, dogs or cats. The opera soundtrack adds a sense of fatality to the old vivid market that will become reality. The city of Odesa has been under Russian fire since February 2022.

Daria Badior

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Eva Neymann
Cinematographer
Eva Neymann, Saša Oreškovic
Editor
Pavel Zalesov
Producer
Gennady Kofman, Olga Beskhmelnytsina
Sound
Valentyn Pynchuk, Ivo Heger
Nominated for: MDR Film Prize
Filmstill Smoke of the Fire

Smoke of the Fire

O fumo do fogo
Daryna Mamaisur
Panorama: Central and Eastern Europe 2023
Documentary Film
Portugal,
Ukraine,
Belgium,
Hungary
2023
22 minutes
Portuguese (Portugal),
Ukrainian
Subtitles: 
English

Learning a foreign language is like creating another self. How can you speak it without losing your own sound, without dissolving completely in it – and still be heard and noticed? This film is a charming and intellectually fastidious attempt to navigate the complexities of language, identity and trauma.

To do this, the filmmaker resorts to her own biography. Because Russia invaded Ukraine when Daryna Mamaisur, who comes from Kyiv, was in Portugal for a Doc Nomads graduate course. Home and the search for it became the defining factors of this work, as well as the traumatic situation of only being able to “witness” the difficult situation from a distance. She, the Ukrainian in Portugal, learns Portuguese. She lets the new words for “war,” “explosion” and “attack” roll off her tongue. She compares them with the soft, intimate sound of her native language, with the sound of Kyiv. Friends send audio and visual recordings from Ukraine which, combined with animations, become a multilayered essay and finally a testimony – for the resilience of language and culture, no matter where they are spoken and lived, and not least for the power of the artistic documentary, which can make speech and sound possible.

Victoria Leshchenko

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Daryna Mamaisur
Cinematographer
Shaheen Ahmed, Daryna Mamaisur, Svitlana Vostrikova
Editor
Daryna Mamaisur
Producer
Frederik Nicolai, Daryna Mamaisur
Sound
Ghada Fikri, Juliette Menthonnex, Tetiana Usova
Sound Design
Anna Khvyl
World Sales
Valentina Zalevska
Filmstill Three Windows on South West

Three Windows on South West

Three Windows on South West
Mariia Ponomarova
International Competition Documentary Film 2023
Documentary Film
Ukraine,
Netherlands
2023
8 minutes
Ukrainian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

In 2002, the filmmaker moved into an apartment on the 15th floor of a Kyiv high-rise. She was twelve at the time. Today, from the safe distance of another country, she talks to people who remember the flat and the time spent together. Coming-of-Age, the love of cinema, a sense of community and the erotic charge of individual moments combine to create an image of missing home and intimacy. With every memory, we zoom a little out of the still image on screen: three windows facing southwest, a balcony facing southeast, a rooftop protected from view, a high-rise panorama. The warm and personal gaze at the sky and houses of Kyiv is mirrored in the cold attentiveness of international war reporting.

Jan Künemund

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Mariia Ponomarova
Script
Mariia Ponomarova
Editor
Mariia Ponomarova
Producer
Mariia Ponomarova
Sound Design
Sergio González Cuervo
World Sales
Lucila Riggio
-
Oleksii Isakov
Doc Alliance Award 2023
Filmstill waking up in silence
waking up in silence
Mila Zhluktenko, Daniel Asadi Faezi
Once German barracks, now accommodation for refugees: Ukrainian children practice a new language, explore strange rooms. A shimmering summer moment between leaving and arriving.
Filmstill waking up in silence

waking up in silence

waking up in silence
Mila Zhluktenko, Daniel Asadi Faezi
Doc Alliance Award 2023
Documentary Film
Germany,
Ukraine
2023
17 minutes
Ukrainian,
English,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

The calls of the swifts fill the air. A sound that is the epitome of summer. The sun shines down on a chunky building. Surrounded by this shimmering and seemingly carefree atmosphere, children practice German vocabulary, explore empty rooms, and draw with chalk on the ground in front of the house. But not playground designs like hopscotch. Again and again, they write on the curb: “Putin, stop killing people.”

A former Wehrmacht barracks, later used by the U.S. army, this bright yellow complex now serves as accommodation for refugees from Ukraine. The directing duo’s poetic film captures an instant in the lives of these youngsters: a short and yet decisive moment between two worlds, one of them already left behind, not quite arrived yet in the other and a vague future in sight.

Lina Dinkla

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Mila Zhluktenko, Daniel Asadi Faezi
Script
Mila Zhluktenko, Daniel Asadi Faezi
Cinematographer
Tobias Blickle
Editor
Mila Zhluktenko, Daniel Asadi Faezi
Producer
Mila Zhluktenko, Daniel Asadi Faezi
Co-Producer
Andrii Kotliar
Sound
Kristina Kilian
Sound Design
Daniel Asadi Faezi, Andrew Mottl
Score
Anton Baibakov
World Sales
Wouter Jansen
Filmstill When Will the Winter of 2022 End?

When Will the Winter of 2022 End?

Koly zakinchyt’sya zyma 2022?
Hanna Trofimova
International Competition Short Film 2022
Documentary Film
Ukraine
2022
23 minutes
Ukrainian,
Russian
Subtitles: 
English

With this personal video diary from Kyiv, artist Hanna Trofimova manages to make us comprehend something of how the war infiltrates and destroys life and everyday routines, even if one’s own apartment has not been hit by a bomb yet. Images of an oppressive “normality” between alarm sirens and explosions are combined with the touching words of a young woman who tries not to lose herself and her life to the new reality.

Luc-Carolin Ziemann

Credits DOK Leipzig Logo

Director
Hanna Trofimova
Cinematographer
Hanna Trofimova
Editor
Hanna Trofimova
Producer
Hanna Trofimova
Sound
Hanna Trofimova