Even the most complicated processes and questions become clearer and acquire real significance when they touch us personally, or when we see how they affect the lives of specific people and can relate those experiences to our own through empathy and solidarity. We invite you to discover the films of the 23rd Docudays UA that complement the events of the RIGHTS NOW! Lectorium and help reveal the human dimension of these complex topics.
This year, the RIGHTS NOW! Lectorium — a new section of the Docudays UA human rights programme — features six lectures by prominent Ukrainian and international intellectuals, each closely connected to a film in the festival’s film programme. Together, they offer an opportunity to see the human stories behind global processes and to understand how wars, crises, political decisions, and public policies affect societies and the world as a whole — and how we, as Ukrainians, are changing and rethinking ourselves amid these events. Some of the films reach far beyond Ukraine while at the same time offering a new perspective on our own path, suggesting ways to navigate various challenges and warning of dangers we may face.
“Every year, I enjoy observing how the experiences of other cultures, communities, and countries resonate with the Ukrainian context. What I value most about the Lectorium’s films is that each of them, in its own field, captures an important quality, idea, or feeling that Ukrainian society is living through right now,” says Anastasiia Bahalika, Director of the Human Rights Department at NGO Docudays.
Docudays UA films and their connection to the events of the RIGHTS NOW! Lectorium
Alongside the lecture by Oleksandr ‘Teren’ Budko, Integration of Veterans with Disabilities: How Ukrainian Society Is Changing, which opens the Lectorium, watch Peace for Nina by Jeanne Dovhych. This documentary follows the mother of a fallen defender who spends more than 8 years searching for truth and justice while simultaneously embarking on a path toward healing. The film opens up a broader perspective on how military families live through traumatic experiences, and how society adapts to new, sensitive realities and learns to engage with them.
The subject of global influence, which we will explore during the lecture Exploiting Vulnerability: How Russia Recruits Foreigners for the War in Ukraine by Denys Sultanhaliyev from the Truth Hounds team, is reflected in the film programme through The Promise by Daan Veldhuizen, a painful story of West Papua’s struggle for recognition and independence. Constructed from archival footage and testimonies of Papuans living in exile, the documentary shows how colonialism gave way to neocolonialism, and how the geopolitical and economic interests of major powers led to decades of oppression and the genocide of an entire people.
In the context of the lecture How Memory Shapes Us: The Difficult Lessons of History by Anton Drobovych, we recommend watching The Silence of Others by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar. The film follows Spanish society’s struggle for the right to truth and remembrance of the crimes of the Franco dictatorship, raising questions of historical amnesia, transitional justice, and universal jurisdiction.
The festival’s opening film, Born to Fake by Erec Brehmer and Benjamin Rost, tells the story of German journalist Michael Born, who fabricated television stories for years. The film offers a space for reflection on the nature of fake news and the mechanisms through which reality is constructed, making it a perfect companion to Peter Pomerantsev’s lecture War for Reality: Is It Possible to Resist Enemy Propaganda and Preserve the Truth?.
A still from the film Sergei Paradzhanov. Visits
To explore the roots of our complex relationship with the state, attend Yevhen Hlibovytskyi’s lecture Overcoming the Past: Why We Don’t Trust Our Own State and watch the short film programme from the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre. Made in the late 1980s and early 1990s, these films offer a glimpse of Ukrainian society on the verge of independence.
For the final lecture of this year’s Docudays UA, Decolonisation as an Act of Agency: How Ukraine Is Rethinking Itself — and Choosing What It Should Be by Kateryna Botanova, we have selected the ironic yet deeply moving film Celtic Utopia by Dennis Harvey and Lars Lovén. The film explores how the Irish reflect on their identity, revive their language and folk music even a century after gaining independence from England, and how decolonisation becomes a living process of shaping society.
Read the details about dates, times and locations in the festival schedule. Watch the films before or after the lectures, discover and make sense of the themes from different experiences; the lecture announcements and the full RIGHTS NOW! programme are available at the link.
Main photo: a still from the film The Silence of Others
The 23rd Docudays UA is held with the financial support of the European Union, the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, and the State Film Agency of Ukraine. The views, conclusions, or recommendations expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the governments of these countries. The authors alone are responsible for the content of this publication.
