Zhanna Maksymenko-Dovhych

People in a Southern Ukrainian city come out to commemorate an important national holiday. Old and new symbols mix in their quest for identity and common understanding. Despite living on neighboring streets, the distance between them is growing. This is a portrait of people who demonstrated on the main square of a city in a country to which war has returned. The film was shot on Victory day on May 9th in Mykolaiv. The flagship city of Russia’s Imperial and Soviet shipbuilding, the city which during Soviet times was considered completely pro-Russian, suddenly reveals its Ukrainian essence. Discussions, various symbols, the battle between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Soviet, red poppies and St. George’s ribbon… In its search for a new self and place in modern day Ukraine, it hurdles itself from one extreme to another.

This is the story about a person who try to be himself almost one evening in all life. He managed to to so, unfortunately paying a nigh prize for it.

This is the story about a person who try to be himself almost one evening in all life. He managed to to so, unfortunately paying a nigh prize for it.

A series of multi-genre short films dedicated to the epidemic of socio-cultural nihilism that has engulfed Ukrainian society.

It is a story about a woman overtaken by war all her life. Her father was a Soviet soldier in the time of World War II, her husband was a Soviet military officer who died from injuries sustained during the infamous Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan, while Nina’s eldest son volunteered with the Ukrainian Armed Forces and was captured and brutally executed by Russian mercenaries during the undeclared war between Russia and Ukraine in the East of Ukraine.