Moderator: Olga Birzul
Olha Zhurba is a film director, screenwriter, and editor; laureate of the Ukrainian Film Academy’s Golden Dzyga and the National Film Critics Award Kinokolo. Her works have been showcased at leading international film festivals such as Locarno FF, IDFA, Docudays UA, Molodist, Hot Docs, and Trieste FF. She is the author of the documentary film Songs of Slow Burning Earth, which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The film has received awards at festivals in Latvia, Italy, Hungary, Germany, the Czech Republic, and the USA, and has been featured in programs of other notable festivals worldwide. Currently, Olha is pursuing a master's degree in the “Future of Heritage” program at UCU.
Alisa Kovalenko is a Ukrainian documentary film director whose films have won numerous awards at international film festivals. She was born on September 24, 1987, in Zaporizhzhia. She studied at the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University, and the Andrzej Wajda School (DOC PRO course) in Warsaw, specialising in documentary filmmaking.
Her first feature-length documentaries, Alice in Warland (IDFA 2015) and Home Games (Sheffield Doc/Fest 2018), were screened at over 100 international festivals and received multiple awards. The world premiere of her third documentary about the adventures of teenagers in the frontline Donbas, We Will Not Fade Away, took place at the Berlinale film festival in 2023. The film received 20 international honours and awards, was named Best Documentary at the 7th Ukrainian Film Academy Awards Golden Dzyga, and was shortlisted by the European Film Academy for the Best European Documentary category. From March to July 2022, Alisa actively participated in combat operations on the front lines in the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions as part of a volunteer assault unit of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army (UDA). This existential experience inspired her new personal documentary, My Dear Théo, which had its world premiere at the Copenhagen documentary film festival CPH:DOX in April 2025. Alisa Kovalenko is also a human rights activist and a board member of SEMA Ukraine, an organisation of Ukrainian women who survived conflict-related sexual violence as a result of Russian armed aggression. She is currently working on a new documentary, Traces, which aims to document crimes of sexual violence committed by Russian military forces in Ukraine from 2014 to 2023.
Oleksandr Bilous is a PhD of of Psychological Sciences and an Associate Professor at the Department of General Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. He is originally from Kherson. In 1998, he graduated from Kherson Pedagogical Institute with a Biology and Practical Psychology degree, qualifying as a biology teacher and school psychologist. After completing his studies, he worked at Kherson Pedagogical University and later moved to Kyiv to pursue postgraduate studies at Taras Shevchenko National University, where he continues to work. His research interests include environmental psychology, psychology of art, and oral history. He participates in social projects and occasionally appears on television and podcasts as a psychology expert.
Olga Sydorushkina is a film curator and cultural manager. She has worked at the Odesa International Film Festival and at the Green Theatre (Odesa). Currently, she is a programmer for Docudays UA IHRDFF and a programme curator at the Ukrainian Institute London, where she also oversees the annual Ukrainian Film Festival. Olga is the founder of the PORUCH Festival in Odesa.
Olga Birzul is a film curator, cultural manager, festival selector, and coordinator of cultural diplomacy projects. She began working for Ukrainian cultural media as a journalist and editor. In 2009, she joined the team of the Docudays UA film festival. Later, she headed the film department at the Ukrainian Institute. She is the author of lectures on the history and theory of documentary cinema. During the full-scale invasion, she wrote Your Book About Cinema, a nonfiction book for teenagers about the film industry, dedicated to the memory of her late husband Viktor Onysko, a film editor and soldier.
