20 November, 19:00
PALACE OF ARTS «UKRAINIAN HOUSE»
Khreshchatyk St, 2
To be away from home with all the attributes of life that cannot be returned. Discovering parenthood from a distance, watching your son's first steps through your smartphone camera. Starting a new life hundreds of kilometers away from your family. And no matter what contexts fate brings you to, you have to preserve your identity. The experience of adapting to the new reality is recorded by Ukrainians abroad.
Screening duration: 67 min
Trigger and content warnings: sounds of explosions, gunshots, air raid alert
The films are screened in original with English subtitles
The films are available online in Ukraine
I STUMBLE EVERY TIME I HEAR FROM KYIV
Daryna Mamaisur
Ukraine / 2023, 17 min
"I'm speechless" is a familiar expression when the reality of war is so shocking that language seems unable to comprehend it. Once the full-scale Russia's invasion into Ukraine began, Daryna was in Brussels at her studies. In the spring of 2022, when chestnuts are blooming both in Brussels and in her native Kyiv, Daryna begins to work on a film based on conversations and video exchanges with a friend in Kyiv. At the same time, she is overwhelmed with the question, if making a film about war, how to talk about a wound that is unhealed and will be lasting for a long time?
LESIA
Marharyta Tokarieva, Jiangnan Wang, Nefeli Polymerou
Greece / 2022, 14 min
Lesia moved to Athens 23 years ago. The film unveils her Ukrainian identity through the changing of her name and depicts the war’s influence as an empowering factor to defend one’s identity.
YURA
Vladyslav Deva
Poland / 2023, 13 min
Wartime Ukraine. Burdened by the promises made to his loved ones, a young activist resorts to illegal means to bypass the ban on men leaving the country.
SAY DADDY
Andrii Shostak
Poland / 2023, 6 min
Eight-month-old Lew lives with his mother in Poland, where they had to flee from the war in Ukraine. His dad can't hug him or see him take his first steps nor say his first words.
ONE ALOE, ONE FICUS, ONE AVOCADO AND SIX DRACAENAS
Marta Smerechynska
Ukraine, France / 2023, 8 min
There are a washing machine wrapped in tape, meter-long indoor plants with roots and children's drawings among the hundreds of boxes on which addresses of Ukrainian cities are written. This place resembles a warehouse of lost things. The silence is broken by a woman's voice, that of the owner of one of these boxes. She is bidding farewell to her home in Kyiv, speaking of the belongings left behind. Each item has a story, a memory that is being left behind. Through her words, the home seems to come alive, each item imbued with a sense of warmth and familiarity.
People begin to appear in the so-called warehouse, taking their pieces of home in the form of parcels. They sift through the boxes, searching for their treasured possessions. Some are filled with joy, others with sadness.
Meanwhile a woman's voice questions, does the loss of belongings matter?
AH SO
Polina Piddubna
Germany / 2022, 3 min
I rent a very small room in Berlin (which reminds me of a coffin) and have very strange dreams there. People are held in suspense without knowing when will it all be over. The club is closed, the ambulance won’t come and everything that’s left to do is just walking around the city with your inner monsters.
SEASHELL
Kyra Tripulska
Czechia / 2023, 6 min
When the war in Ukraine begins, a five-year old girl and her mother have to abandon their hometown and move to a safer place. They found themselves in an unknown crowded city, where the new chapter of their lives begins.