Travelling Docudays UA-2022 took place despite shelling and blackouts. From 12 November to the end of December, the audience in Ukraine and even abroad watched the talented documentary films offline and online. They also participated in discussions and human rights events. We share the results and incredible moments of the most stunning Travelling Docudays UA.

This year's Festival was held in a shortened period, but this didn't stop the team, together with regional partners, from organising a rich programme and holding all the planned events. In particular, 218 offline film screenings took place in 17 regions of Ukraine. The audience from Germany, Israel, Norway, and Poland joined the Festival for the first time. Offline and online, we held 251 screenings and 82 events in total.

The Travelling Docudays UA programme included 19 films: a block of short films made by Ukrainian directors after the start of the full-scale invasion, as well as foreign and Ukrainian films from the 19 DOCUDAYS UA programme, which the team prepared last winter for screenings in cinemas in peaceful Kyiv. The Festival's theme, State of Emergency, was very close and clear to the audience. Participants of the events discussed new realities and how to adapt to them in every area of life, shared experiences and problems, and searched for and found new meanings and pillars of support.

19 Travelling Docudays UA in Lviv

The Travelling Docudays UA started on 12 November in Lviv with a flash mob in support of Maksym Butkevych, a friend of the Festival and a human rights activist who is still in Russian captivity, and a film screening of the documentary-animated film Tales of a Toy Horse by Ulyana Osovska, Denis Strashny. Traditionally, events of the human rights programme RIGHTS NOW! took place during the Festival. The programme includes five conversations in an online format, where the audience, together with experts, discuss how to work with the consequences of war. In particular, what experience should be considered in the medical system reform, how to save the environment and document losses, as well as what Ukrainian society will be like after victory.

19 Travelling Docudays UA in Lviv

The journey of the Travelling Festival was full of special events and many 'first times'. The Festival travelled abroad, and a total of eight screenings were held in the cities of Germany, Israel, Norway, and Poland. Also, several of our coordinators held a festival for the audience of two regions or cities at once, including their native regions and those where they had to temporarily relocate due to the war: Mariupol and Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and Lviv Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, and Cherkasy. The regional coordinators did not leave their audience without the opportunity to watch the documentary films, meet together and talk about their experiences. By the way, Travelling Festival visited Cherkasy Oblast for the first time.

Within this year's Festival, the team implemented the special project "Why Ukrainians win." These are 11 stories of resilience about the invincibility, struggle, and victories of the Travelling Docudays UA regional coordinators, which were published every week on the websites of the Travelling Festival and Suspilne media.

Together with the films, the exhibition Unconquered Kherson by Oleksandr Korniakov, a photo reporter of the Vhory Media Platform, travelled around the country. This is a photo story about the thirst for freedom of the brave and fearless people of Kherson and their resistance to the Russian occupation. During the Travelling Docudays UA, the exhibition visited Cherkasy, Dnipro, Lutsk, Ternopil, Lviv, Chornomorsk, Khmilnyk, Chortkiv, and Zaporizhzhia. The exhibition presentation took place in a shelter during air raid sirens and with flashlights due to a blackout. However, this did not stop the visitors. They were interested to hear about Kherson's struggle firsthand and shared stories of their resistance.

19 Travelling Docudays UA in Lviv

During December, the creative teams and film protagonists of the films included in the Festivals' programme joined about 40 online discussions. The following films were discussed: Cry My River, A House Made of Splinters, The Hamlet Syndrome, Fortress Mariupol. Orest, Peace and Tranquility, Mountains and Heaven in Between, The Bright Path and The Last Generation. The directors of the film The Hamlet Syndrome, Elwira Niewiera, Piotr Rosolowski, came to the Lviv screening of the film at the Jam Factory Art Center with a humanitarian mission bringing power generators.

Travelling Docudays UA ended with two events: an offline screening of the film Mountains and Heaven in Between in Odesa and an interactive class, "Restrictions of Human Rights in Wartime," in Sumy on 30 December. This year's Festival brought the greatest number of challenges and risks, but this is what made it unique and iconic. The event was made possible by the unbreakable 26 regional coordinators, who were not stopped by power outages, enemy missiles, or air raids sirens.

The source: travelling.docudays.ua
All photos: Jam Factory Art Center's Facebook page

Main photo: Stas Kartashov

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The 19th Docudays UA is held with support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, the Stabilisation Fund for Culture and Education 2022 of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Goethe-Institut, and the Polish Institute in Kyiv. The Festival's inclusivity is supported by Oschadbank and Mastercard.The opinions, conclusions, or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of the governments, charities, or companies of these countries. Responsibility for the content of the publication lies exclusively on the authors and editors of the publication.