Ukrainian movies

The film is a psychological drama developing on the highlands of the Carpathian Mountains. Two helpless old men, brothers, desperately trying to keep up competition with each other in order to prolong their lives. Even though their bodies are decaying and both are sick the one still wants to outlive the other. But one day a woman enters their remote dwelling...

Vadim is twenty-two. He's a sound engineer and a downer. He's going to Canada in three months. Forever. Before the departure he's assigned to record the voice of a very rare bird, which dwells only in the Transcarpathian mountains of Ukraine.

Four short stories are set along the roads of Donbas, Ukraine during the war. There are no safe spaces and no one can make sense of just what is going on. Even as they are trapped in the chaos, some manage to wield authority over others. But in this world, where tomorrow may never come, not everyone is defenseless and miserable - and even the most innocent victims may have their turn at taking charge.

It is a story that resonates for a generation of Ukrainian women - working in a foreign land to build a better future for their family back home. However, where there may be financial rewards, the personal costs may be high. Ukrainian woman, Darynka is returning home after several years working in Italy. She left for Italy to find work to support her family in Bukovina in the central Eastern Carpathians of Ukraine. That work involves taking care of a wealthy Italian lawyer and his elderly mother. It is a lonely existence, she is totally dependent on her employers, the elderly woman treats her with disdain and the work is round the clock. The money offers her family an opportunity to escape the otherwise grinding poverty that would have marked their lives. It funds a new house, destined to be accommodation for visitors to this part of the Carpathian Mountains, her husband is building it, however he is doing it casually and slowly. However, while she was earning money abroad her family has slowly fallen apart. It all comes to a head upon her return. Her husband has developed a drinking problem, her daughter is in love with and pregnant to a young man who upon finding out he is to be a father goes cold on the relationship and refuses to do the 'honourable thing' and marry her. Her daughter's problems aside, Darynka has a secret of her own. She is also pregnant. The father is her Italian employer, the lawyer. What is she going to do now? How can she tell her husband? Darynka's problems are only going to get worse and they spiral to unimaginable tragedies. There is however, some light at the end of the tunnel...

THE DISTANT BARKING OF DOGS is set in Eastern Ukraine on the frontline of the war. The film follows the life of 10-year-old Ukrainian boy Oleg throughout a year, witnessing the gradual erosion of his innocence beneath the pressures of war. Oleg lives with his beloved grandmother, Alexandra, in the small village of Hnutove. Having no other place to go, Oleg and Alexandra stay and watch as others leave the village. Life becomes increasingly difficult with each passing day, and the war offers no end in sight. In this now half-deserted village where Oleg and Alexandra are the only true constants in each other's lives, the film shows just how fragile, but crucial, close relationships are for survival. Through Oleg's perspective, the film examines what it means to grow up in a war zone. It portrays how a child's universal struggle to discover what the world is about grows interlaced with all the dangers and challenges the war presents. Thus, THE DISTANT BARKING OF DOGS unveils the consequences of war bearing down on the children in Eastern Ukraine, and by natural extension, the scars and self-taught life lessons this generation will carry with them into the future.

The story of a five year old little rebellious girl Vitka with her teenage cousin Larysa and her boyfriend, the young criminal Scar unfolds in a Ukrainian provincial setting. Larysa finds herself at a crossroads after the death of her father. Yearning to be self made, the village community ostracizes her for loving Scar. Larysa discovers her grandmother once sacrificed her love for a young gypsy abandoning him for traditional values and other people's opinions. Larysa's mother is too psychologically weak to support her daughter. Larysa and Scar plan to escape from a life of crime, misery and their relatives. But are they ready to pay the full price for freedom?

The young Lithuanian Rokas accepts the order to deliver a lot of humanitarian aid for the Ukrainian army, plunged in full separatist conflict with Russia. In the company of his girlfriend Inga, he will discover the horrors of war. After an episode involving a group of journalists living in a strange hedonistic bubble, this couple of travelers will go through a crisis that will transform their lives. With a story that navigates between disturbing silences and sharp dialogues, the director Sharunas Bartas elaborates a kind of road movie that shows the desolation and tedium of its protagonists in the face of the fears generated by the warfare in which they are immersed.

Starting out as an aggressive delinquent, a young man nicknamed "Rhino" quickly works his way up the criminal hierarchy in 1990's Ukraine. Rhino has only known power and cruelty, but with nothing left to lose, could he finally find a chance at redemption?

Peter is a 10-year-old boy living in the midst of turbulent early-1930s Soviet Ukraine. His father, an American engineer, is killed for obtaining secret documents about the repressions, which now are hidden in Peter's book. The boy flees from the police with a blind kobzar (Ukrainian folk minstrel), Ivan Kocherga. Ivan does everything to help his young guide grow up and survive with a kind and clear soul that will not be hardened by what his eyes have seen. He tells his young guide elaborate stories that make him believe there can be a different reality from what he sees around him. The viewer is challenged to admit that the blind kobzar might see the world with greater clarity than those with perfect eyes.

A soldier suffering from PTSD befriends a young volunteer hoping to restore peaceful energy to a war-torn society.

The story about a few days in the life of truck driver Georgi seems to be a never-ending nightmare, a spiral of violence and abuses of power. A man goes to work and on his way he is sucked into the everyday madness of his country, losing his health and memory in the process.

In the country with the biggest police force in Europe, Ukraine, there is a lack of policemen in rural communities therefore villagers of Stara Zburievka village have found a solution. They chose two local men - the smartest and the strongest - to take care of the public order. Villagers give them power, a car, and shiny tokens and name them "sheriffs". Sometimes wild and violent, the other times awkward and funny, sheriffs' actions, according to the village community, are always fair. However, the recent political events taking place in Ukraine have changed the situation in Stara Zburievka village, too. Will the sheriffs' activities, which started as a protest to the existing corrupted system, be able to cope with the new, complex and revolutionary transition? The "Ukrainian Sheriffs" is a kind, funny, and sometimes shocking story about average Ukrainians who take action and build their own, let's say idealistic, country model combining wildness and kindness, immorality and humanity. It is a film that telling a story of one village tells a story about the whole country.

To cope with the daily trauma of living in a war-zone, Anna and her children are making a film together about their life in the most surreal surroundings.

An introverted high-school girl Masha sees herself as an outsider unless she hangs around with Yana and Senia who share her non-conformist status. While she is trying to navigate through an intense time of the pre-graduation year, Masha falls in love that forces her to leave her comfort zone. From a debutant Ukrainian director Kateryna Gornostai, a deeply personal story about self-discovery and the patience it requires.

A story about a tragic date in the history of the Crimean Tatar nation - 18 of may 1944 -Stalin's deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Main character of the film - a pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Amehtan Sultan - goes on furlough to his native town Alupka in May of 1944 and witnesses the deportation.

The film centers on Ukrainian surgeon Serhiy, who is captured by the Russian military forces in the conflict zone in Eastern Ukraine, and while in captivity, he is exposed to horrifying scenes of humiliation, violence and indifference toward human life. After his release, he returns to his comfortable middle-class apartment and tries to find a purpose in life by rebuilding his relationship with his daughter and ex-wife. He learns how to be a human being again, how to be a father and help his daughter, who needs his love and support.