From May 28 to June 1, the ninth Ukraine on Film festival will take place at the Galeries cinema in Brussels, Belgium. The tradition of screening Ukrainian cinematographic works in the de facto capital of the European Union was launched as a cultural diplomacy initiative against the backdrop of Russian aggression that began in 2014. Over these years, the film showcase has become an important platform for presenting Ukrainian culture, history, and contemporary realities to European audiences.
The festival is organized by the Ukrainian Institute, the film company Arthouse Traffic, the Society of Ukrainians in Belgium, with support from the Embassy of Ukraine to the Kingdom of Belgium, the Mission of Ukraine to the European Union, the ARTE TV channel, and Cinema Galeries.
This year’s film showcase presents 5 films — both from creators who have already gained worldwide recognition and from stars who are just emerging. Ukrainian cinema continues to explore Russia’s war against Ukraine and its impact on society through both fiction and documentary films, with documentaries bringing yet another Oscar nomination this year. Although this theme deeply concerns Ukrainians, the country’s cinema is far from monotonous: the program also includes a delicate documentary exploration of the USSR’s collapse and its impact on a whole generation, as well as Ukraine’s first science-fiction feature about space.
“Porcelain War” by directors Slava Leontiev and Brendan Bellomo is nominated for the Oscar Award in the category of Best Documentary Film. Last year, the film won the Grand Jury Prize at the American Documentary Competition at Sundance — the main independent film festival in the USA. It tells the story of three Kharkiv artists who continue to create art despite constant shelling. Amid ruins, they find beauty, proving that the human desire for life cannot be destroyed even under terror conditions.
“Songs of Slow Burning Earth” by director Olga Zhurba is an audiovisual diary of Ukraine’s descent into the abyss of total war, filmed during the first two years of Russia’s full-scale invasion. The film consists of landscapes, chance encounters, rare dialogues, expressive sounds, and silence that gradually reveal the tragic chronology of normalizing the feeling of war in society. The film was made in collaboration with the ARTE channel as part of the Generation Ukraine project — a collection of 12 documentaries by Ukrainian directors dedicated to the long-term impact of Russian aggression on people, landscapes, identity, and the country’s memory. The film’s screening in Brussels is also part of the French Institute’s initiative “In the Face of War – European Dialogue,” which aims to stimulate European discussion about the consequences of the war in Ukraine and the prospects of EU enlargement.
“Fragments of Ice” by director Maria Stoyanova is a delicate hypnotic journey through the video archive of her father — a figure skating star who toured abroad in the 1980s and 1990s. On 15 videotapes, he recorded not only his travels and his daughter’s growth but also the global historical changes that shaped a whole generation — the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of independent Ukraine. In Ukraine, the film was awarded the National Film Critics Prize “Kinokolo” and several awards at Docudays UA — the country’s main documentary film festival.
“You Are Universe” is a science-fiction film and the full-length debut of Pavlo Ostrikov, a two-time winner of Ukraine’s National Prize “Golden Dzyga” and nominee for the European Film Academy Award for his short films. The festival journey of the film began at the Toronto International Film Festival and has already won awards at film festivals in Cottbus, Thessaloniki, Boston, Trieste, and Paris. It tells the story of love between a space trucker and a woman from a distant space station, who turn out to be the last people after Earth’s destruction.
“Grey Bees” is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Andriy Kurkov, one of the best books of 2022 according to the American weekly The New Yorker. Dmitry Moiseyev’s drama tells the story of two residents of the “grey zone” in eastern Ukraine — a small village surrounded by war. The world premiere took place at the major European “A-class” Rotterdam festival, and the jury of the Odessa International Film Festival recognized “Grey Bees” as the best Ukrainian feature film.
