This year, the Docudays UA festival’s closing film will be a study of various forms of self-development, personal growth and effectiveness courses. Now Something Is Slowly Changing is a clear-cut, distinctly visual portrayal of the present-day coaching and training culture. The film will be personally presented by its director Menna Laura Meijer.

Without protagonists, interviews or voice-overs, the film observes, for instance, animal-assisted therapy sessions, a class in happiness for primary school children, a training session in dealing with tension and aggression for city law enforcement officers, and a vlogger trying to calm her stressed-out followers with gentle, relaxing sounds.

“It’s a perfect closing film. After watching all the 76 films of this year’s festival program, you will realize that your mind has been rewired,” comments the program director Viktoria Leshchenko. “As if after a surgery, it will become better, albeit slowly. This film is brilliantly ironic. The church of the new day is completely different from what we imagined. Few people could capture it as well as the director, Menna. As we watch this film, we witness the new advent. The place of one’s personal priest, doctor, and now a therapist, too, has been taken by a personal coach. The omnipresent coach fills your social media feed, your favorite magazine, online resource or your house with his offers. He will teach you everything you can think of in the moments of sincere desperation. When there is suddenly no significant other in your bed beside you. When your favorite job becomes disappointing. When in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s you realize that life is just beginning and you know nothing about it.”

The festival closing ceremony will be on March 28 at 8 p.m. in the IZONE Creative Space. Entry to the ceremony by invitation only. The screening of the closing film will take place in the Zhovten Cinema. You can buy tickets for the film here.

Main photo: A still from the film Now Something is Slowly Changing