Docudays UA has long ceased to be exclusively a human rights film festival – and this year’s program confirms this once again. Documentary cinema is understood here more broadly: as cultural diplomacy, educational work and work with archives and new forms of memory, and not only as a tool of activism. During June 5-12, 82 films from 36 countries will be shown in Kyiv and online. Film critic UP. Culture Alik Darman chose the most interesting from the program and tells where you should go first.
It is worth starting with the most reliable – DOCU/ART – a program at the intersection of documentary cinema and contemporary art. Non-fiction films rarely suffer from a lack of themes or material. The problem is more often something else: it still too often clings to outdated, suffocating narrative forms and directorial decisions that have stopped working in today’s too-fast world.
A frame from the film “Always” directed by Demin Chen
DOCU/ART is a program where content and film language move together, and the form does not serve the theme, but is part of it. This year there are three films in the program. “Always” a chinese Demina Chen – about a boy from Hunan province, who tries to understand the reality of his own family through poetry; the film won the main award of the Danish film festival CPH:DOX.
A frame from the movie “Red Light Street in the Spotlight”
“Red Light Street in the spotlight” an Indian Bipuljit Basu – about a community of sex workers in a Kolkata brothel looking for – and finding – a space to express themselves through art. “LOVE-22-LOVE” by the well-known Dutch artist Jeroen Koymans – a self-portrait of an artist on the border between mental illness, creativity and marriage.
A frame from the film “The Script” by Marie Wilke
The central theme of the festival is “Simple designs” – about the basic mechanisms that help us hold on. The festival aims to reveal this idea through three programs at the same time – “Simple constructions”, “Strong constructions” and “Deconstructions”. Among films of the central program stands out “Scenario” by Marie Wilke – about the military training ground in Germany, where NATO countries simulate scenarios of future wars. A documentary film about the preparation for what seems to be waiting for the world soon.
“Deconstructions” is a program for discerning viewers and the most interesting development of the central theme of the festival. In the curatorial text, the program director Yulia Kovalenko writes that understanding the colonial past and decolonial practices has become one of the important components of our reality – and “Deconstructions” tries to give this a cinematic form.
A frame from the movie “Amilkar”
Essay film “Amilkar” a Spaniard Miguel Ica – a portrait of Amilcar Cabral, one of the key theorists of decolonization, the leader of the liberation struggle against the Portuguese Empire in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.
A frame from the film “Celtic Utopia”
“Celtic Utopia” directors Dennis Harvey and Lars Loven – about Irish artists reinterpreting folk music through punk, hip-hop and other genres, trying to heal colonial traumas and understand the country’s first century of partial independence. “Promise” a Dutchman Daan Veldhuizen – about West Papua, which was promised independence and was not given it.
Separately, this program includes a retrospective in partnership with the Dovzhenko Center: five digitized short films of the Ukrkinochronika film studio from the late 1980s and early 1990s. In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about the boom in documentary cinema in Ukraine – IDFA, Berlinale, Oscar, etc. But much less is said about those who filmed before us.
“Ukrkinochronika” is a real Pandora’s box of documentary film, whose films and directors have almost completely disappeared from cultural memory: partly because this legacy is uncomfortably Soviet, but mainly because of the lack of systematic work with it during the decades of independence. This selection includes Afghanistan, Chernobyl, the return of the Crimean Tatars and other important and painful topics of Ukrainian history. The retrospective is interesting not only as a look into the past, but rather as an attempt to bridge the gap in the tradition of Ukrainian non-fiction cinema.
A frame from the film “If Pigeons Turned to Gold” by Pepa Luboyatsky
DOCU/HITS is a program of films awarded at the leading world festivals. “If pigeons turned to gold” by Pepa Luboyatsky – Berlinale 2026 main documentary about intergenerational addiction and trauma: video diary, animated photos, AI graphics.
“Hair, paper, water” by Nicolas Gro and Chiong Min Kui – one of the winners in last year’s Locarno, about a woman from the Hand people who passes on a language on the verge of extinction to her grandchildren.
A frame from the movie “Do you love me?” Lana Dager
There are 10 films in the DOCU/SVIT international competition. “Do you love me?” Lana Dager – an archival tape about Beirut, assembled from more than 20,000 hours of material: home video, TV programs, newsreels. “Blessed” by Andriy Lysetskyi have their world premiere here: a film about Ukrainian artists during a full-scale invasion.
“Green Light” by Pavel Kuzuyok – about a neuropsychiatrist who evaluates people seeking assisted suicide. “Myleen” by Maria Silvia Esteve – a woman who survived violence as a child, only after becoming a mother, decides to demand the punishment of the offender.
A frame from the film “Stories from Wolf Street” by Arjun Talwar
“Stories from Wolf Street” – Indian director Arjun Talwarwho remained in Warsaw, films his neighbors: the contradictions of Polish society are revealed here through the eyes of a foreigner.
DOCU/BRIEF – thirteen tapes from thirteen countries, including Ukrainian works. A short feature on Docudays UA is a way to see what young documentary cinema is all about. And DOCU/YUNIST is a separate program aimed at teenagers, which reminds us that documentary films for young audiences are sometimes more honest than those made “for everyone”.
DOCU/UKRAINE is the most accurate way to understand where Ukrainian documentary cinema is going every year. Films that shoot at international festivals eventually come here – and this program gives you the opportunity to see them in their own context. This year, it includes five films, and each explores the nature of resistance in its own way.
A frame from the film “Silent Flood” by Dmytro Suholytky-Sobchuk
“Quiet Flood” by Dmytro Suholytky-Sobchuk (IDFA-2025) – about a closed pacifist religious community in Dniester: how to hold on to anti-war beliefs when the existence of both the country and the community itself depends on armed resistance? “Footprints” by Alisa Kovalenko and Marysa Nikityuk (Berlinale-2026) – about women who survived sexual violence during Russian aggression and united in SEMA Ukraine.
A frame from the film “Where Everything Disappears” by Oleksandr Tkachenko
“Where everything disappears” by Oleksandr Tkachenko – the diary of cameraman and military serviceman Dmytro Dokunov about internal transformations that are difficult to describe, but can be recorded. According to Dokunov himself, this is not a confession, but an “honest presence in the moment” – a film about fear, doubt and the ability to see beauty as a form of resistance to darkness.
Still from the film “Silent Night Illusion” by Olga Chernykh
“The Illusion of Silent Night” by Olga Chernykh – a large-scale project: forty cinematographers and several hundred volunteers filmed one July night in Ukraine; what emerged is a portrait of how banality and horror have become our everyday life. “Don’t ask me if I killed” by Elena Maxim – the only world premiere of the competition: a director-military servicewoman keeps a film diary about endurance and moral burden, about what remains of a person when the world forces him to fight to protect the most precious thing.
Another long-term project of the festival is the War Archive, an initiative to collect and verify materials from the time of the full-scale invasion. “Fragments of Resistance” is its cinematic part this year: films shot by active servicemen and communications departments of military units. Many Ukrainian filmmakers left or ended up in the army – and this program gives an opportunity to hear them precisely as authors. A well-known cinematographer and military officer Vadim Ilkov films will be presented here “Subdivision from scratch” and “Owl”.
Docudays UA often goes beyond the cinema hall, and this year is no exception: the “Transitional State” exhibition dedicated to the memory of the photographer and military serviceman will open on the second floor of the “Zhovten” cinema Kostyantyn Huzenka.
DOCU/SINTEZ is an interdisciplinary art laboratory that this year chose feminist optics as a way to talk about sensitivity and solidarity. Two blocks of moving images from Ukrainian and British authors – about memory, corporeality, visibility and experience that is difficult to express in direct language. And for the first time in Ukraine – a documentary performance Radio Live: journalist Oreli Sharon brings together participants from France, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, Lebanon and Rwanda to talk about how war changes personal and artistic spaces. On June 10 and 11, the performance will take place at the Theater of Drama and Comedy on the Left Bank.
Documentary cinema has long ceased to be only about cinema – it is born and lives in archives, galleries, interdisciplinary practices, testimonies and memory. Docudays UA seems to understand this better than others.
