On 25 November, there was the first film screening as a part of the Travelling Docudays UA 2023: in Giessen, Germany, a Ukrainian audience watched the film Three Women by Maksym Melnyk. The event was organized specifically for the Ukrainian community abroad and was supported by the German-Ukrainian initiative GENAU Kommunikation. The event was moderated by Viktoria Veres, director of NGO CultProjector and regional coordinator of the Travelling Docudays UA in Zaporizhia Region, which she was forced to temporarily leave due to the war and go to Germany. 

Three Women is the graduation project of the director Maksym Melnyk for his degree at the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. It is a visual anthropological study which centers on three women with different personalities and views on life, and on the flow of everyday life in a remote Transcarpathian village located at the intersection of three borders: Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

After watching the film, the audience met online with the director, who is currently in Berlin. Maksym Melnyk shared more details about the film’s story and the problems it raises: about choice and the life situations faced every day by the residents of Stuzhytsia, a small village in Ukrainian Transcarpathia. During the conversation, the audience spoke a lot about Ukraine’s cultural diversity and felt warm emotions as they remembered their homes. The participants of the event were concerned about the further fate of the protagonists — farmer Hanna, biologist Nelia, and postwoman Maria — and about the future of Stuzhytsia.

A still from the film Three Women

The director answered the audience’s questions in detail and with sincerity; he also shared memories about the creation of the film: how it all began, why he picked this particular remote village in between borders, and how he managed to document a part of the protagonists’ lives. The work on the film took several years: in the filmmaker’s opinion, during that time the participants of the filming process were able to build a warm relationship and, in a way, became a kind of one big family.

The conversation with the director inspired the audience to write a letter to Stuzhytsia to greet the protagonists and share their thoughts about what they saw in the film. 

The event organization was also facilitated by Natalia Aliabyeva, the coordinator of one of the film clubs in the DOCU/CLUB Network.

Audience at the Travelling Docudays UA screening of Three Women in Giessen

Header photo: a still from the film Three Women. 

The 20th Travelling Docudays UA is held with the support of the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, Embassy of Switzerland in Ukraine, US Embassy in Ukraine. The opinions, conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of the governments, charities, or companies of these countries. Responsibility for the contents of the material lies solely on its authors.