Between the 12th and 14th of October, there will be a weekend of Ukrainian documentaries See Ukraine: The Empty Pedestal in Madrid. It is here that the European journey of the Docudays UA Festival will start. The screenings, attended by the films’ authors, will, for the second time, take place in Cineteca Madrid, which specializes in auteur and documentary cinema.
See Ukraine: Docudays UA Travels Europe is a cultural diplomacy project implemented by the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Docudays UA. The project’s program includes documentary film screenings, exhibitions, meetings with Ukrainian filmmakers, and discussions with journalists and human rights advocates. In 2018, See Ukraine: The Empty Pedestal will visit three countries: Spain, Germany and France.
In Madrid, the festival will last three days. Its program features three new documentary films about contemporary Ukrainian reality.
Women in War (2018) by Masha Kondakova, a writer and filmmaker born in Kyiv and now living in Paris, is about the Ukrainian women who took it upon themselves to become soldiers and lay their lives on the line for peace and freedom in their country. The film follows three of those women and the lives they never expected to lead.
Dixie Land (2016) by Roman Bondarchuk depicts the difficult everyday life of Dixie Land, a children’s jazz orchestra from Kherson, and its participants. In 2017, the film won the national competition at the Odesa International Film Festival.
A contemplative film The Cacophony of the Donbas (2017) by Igor Minaiav explores the blind spot of the contemporary Ukrainian history, namely the creation of the myth about the Donbas. The film uses archive footage and recordings of interviews with former Donbas residents who witnessed Russian aggression and became its victims.
Follow the news and the event schedule at the project’s website: seeukraine.today.
See Ukraine: Docudays UA Travels the World is a cultural diplomacy project implemented by the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Docudays UA. In 2016-17, the Festival visited France, Greece, Italy, Germany and Spain. The project is supported by the Open Society Initiative for a Europe (OSIFE).
