Non-governmental organization Docudays has been shortlisted in the Partnership for Sustainable Development 2020 competition in the Overcoming COVID-19 category.
The Partnership for Sustainable Development campaign was launched by the UN Global Compact Network in Ukraine in 2018. Its goal is to facilitate partnership between businesses, business associations, governments, civil society and academic institutions. The ceremony was opened on 26 November by Denys Shmyhal, the Prime Minister of Ukraine; Tetiana Sakharuk, the Director General of the UN Global Compact in Ukraine; and Serhiy Haydarchuk, the president of CEO Club Ukraine. The finalists in the Overcoming COVID-19 category were announced by the singer and TV host Olia Tsybulska.
In 2020, the 17th Docudays UA essentially took place right in the middle of a lockdown. In late March, the festival was just about to start in Kyiv cinemas, but the quarantine made us, as well as many other cultural institutions, face a new reality and its challenges. Within a month, the Docudays UA team created an online mirror of the event which everyone was used to. It became a great success for the festival and a gift to its audience. This year, documentary films were watched by 14,000 people at Docudays in its online cinema. In addition, the festival programme included 18 human rights events, as well as a number of online meetings involving filmmakers, professional discussions, DOCU/PRO industry events and even online parties. The broadcasts of human rights events were watched live by 4131 viewers. In total, recordings on various platforms were watched by over 94,000 people.
During the ceremony, Viktoria Leshchenko, the programme director of the Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, noted: “These times have become an opportunity for us to expand our horizons and to use new tools with which we create the festival. We are moving in a very interesting direction. We have become much more accessible, because thanks to the internet, more people can now see festival documentaries. We plan to grow in this direction and continue organizing online screenings. Today, we are working to restart the DOCUSPACE online cinema, where you can already watch films and the accompanying online events: discussions with filmmakers, human rights events, and to join the festival’s projects. We encourage people to become a part of the shared cultural field.”
In addition to NGO Docudays, other finalists in this category are: the IT company Powercode, Starenki Charity Foundation, Coca Cola Beverages Ukraine Ltd., EVA chain stores, KRONA Charity Foundation, Teple Misto Charity Foundation, METRO Cash & Carry Ukraine, ERAM Ukraine, Kernel, Ukrgazvydobuvannia JSC, Credit Agricole Bank JSC, PepsiCo Ukraine and Astarta-Kyiv.
See more about the competition and its winners at this link.
