This summer in Kyiv, we watched and reflected on a selection of Chilean films curated in collaboration with one of the largest film festivals in Latin America – FIDOCS. From November 19 to 26, a delegation from the NGO Docudays will travel to Santiago to present Ukrainian documentary filmmaking and the challenges of our time through three recent feature-length films.

The Ukrainian delegation includes Docudays UA Program Director Yulia Kovalenko, programmer Olga Sydorushkina, and fundraiser Anastasiia Humeniuk. In addition to introducing the films, the representatives will take part in the festival’s industry events. Yulia Kovalenko will also serve as a jury member in the national competition.

“This year, FIDOCS dedicates a showcase to contemporary Ukrainian cinema. In partnership with Docudays UA (International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival), a leading festival that, amidst the war, brings together a community of filmmakers, activists, and viewers in Kyiv to explore cinema's potential to represent violence, injustice, and pain, but also the forms and gestures of survival, we present three recently produced films that will be screened for the first time in Chile. These films confront the experience of a country under a state of emergency. They are works that interrogate archives, testimonies, and the staging of reality to consider what remains of humanity when it often seems that little of it remains.” comments FIDOCS festival programmer Danilo Petrovich Jorquera.

Still from the film Fragments of Ice

Among the films that audiences in Santiago will see are 2000 Metres to Andriivka by director Mstyslav Chernov, which this year received the Main Prize in the DOCU/WORLD Competition, the Main Prize in the RIGHTS NOW! Competition, and the Audience Award at the 22nd Docudays UA. Militantropos by Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova, Simon Mozghovyi, which won the Jury Prize from the Ukrainian Film Critics Association at the 22nd Docudays UA. And, finally, Fragments of Ice by Mariya Stoyanova, which received the Main Prize in the DOCU/UKRAINE Competition, the Special Mention in the DOCU/WORLD Competition, the Main Prize of Student's Jury, and the Jury Prize from the Ukrainian Film Critics Association in 2024.

The trip of the Docudays NGO delegates to Santiago was organised by the International Renaissance Foundation. The views expressed in the program do not necessarily reflect those of the International Renaissance Foundation.

Main photo: still from the film 2000 Metres to Andriivka