This year, a Ukrainian delegation of documentary filmmakers will travel to IDFA for the first time. 15 representatives of the filmmaking community will present their projects at the Ukraine: Here We Go event, which Docudays UA organizes jointly with the State Film Agency and with support from the Ukrainian Institute.

The participation of a documentary project in the delegation is a unique opportunity to learn more about all the possibilities of the IDFA festival and to expand the network of your professional contacts.

In particular, in addition to film screenings, co-production market and film market, IDFA offers several educational programs. In particular, the IDFAcademy Summer School, which takes place in July, and IDFAcademy and DocLab during the Festival itself in November.

DocLab is a platform for interactive projects, which includes an interactive conference, an immersive network, DocLab Academy and various meetings. And IDFAcademy is a workshop for beginner documentary filmmakers who need help at the stage of project development or editing.

“The work in the workshop is constructed in a way that you basically have no free time at all. For you, getting some rest means watching a film by one of the workshop tutors. Because during the day, you listen to lectures, edit, work individually with your tutor,” the filmmaker Alina Gorlova shares her experience of participation in this year’s IDFAcademy Summer School with her project Between Two Wars. “For my curator, Gladys Joey, it was also her first experience of this kind of workshop. And probably that’s why she treated our project with such attention and individual approach. She did not confuse me with various questions. Instead, she was able to clearly see the tasks I was facing during editing. The main conclusion I drew during the workshop is not to be afraid of going outside the box and making my own film. And everything during that intensive week signified this need for freedom in filmmaking, both the tutors’ films and the lectures.”

See more details about the terms of application for the participation in the Ukraine: Here We Go event here. The application deadline for the Ukrainian delegation is August 1.

Main photo: A presentation of Ukraine: Here We Go! during the Odesa Film Festival (credit: OIFF)