News

What will the opening of the 18th Docudays be like?

24 March 2021

The 18th Docudays UA opening ceremony will start on March 26 at 7:00 p.m. and will be streamed online for the second year in a row.

“This year we wanted to play around with Groundhog Day: quarantine has not disappeared from our lives, and for the second time the lockdown was announced on the eve of the Festival start. Therefore, we again invited the hosts of the 17th Docudays UA opening, Angelina Karyakina and Maksym Shcherbyna,” says Darya Averchenko, PR director of Docudays UA. "This year, instead of a makeshift "office" studio, we will meet on the stage of the empty Zhovten Cinema. However, the cinema hall will not be completely empty: there you will be able to meet characters from Anatolii Surma's cartoons. We wanted to invite the author himself to the ceremony, but because of a new wave of the pandemic, we decided we would invite Anatolii to offline screenings after the quarantine. At the ceremony, you will see Anatolii in a short documentary - this is his first appearance on the screen.

Our opening ceremony at Zhovten Cinema is an opportunity to support the cinema in difficult times and remind everyone that as soon as the coronavirus pandemic is over, we will return to the world of big screens and enjoy the festival films to the fullest.”



During the ceremony, the hosts will present a rich programme of the Festival, and the band Go_A will perform live for the audience. Viewers from all over the world will be able to join the broadcast of the opening at the DOCUSPACE Online Cinema website, as well as on the Docudays UA Facebook page.

The opening film will be Alexander Nanau's Collective, included in the top 5 Academy Award nominees in the "Best International Feature Film" and "Best Documentary Feature" categories. The film revolves around a group of journalists investigating the fire in the Colectiv nightclub in Bucharest. Step by step, they uncover large-scale medical deals. You can watch the film immediately after the opening ceremony at the DOCUSPACE Online Cinema. Collective will be available for viewing in its original language with Ukrainian subtitles.

After watching the film, we invite you to listen to an interview with director Alexander Nanau on docuspace.org.

And starting from March 27 in the online cinema you can watch more than 100 films from the festival programme, join discussions and workshops.

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The 18th Docudays UA is supported by the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, Ukrainian Cultural Foundation and the Ukrainian State Film Agency.

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