XIII Docudays UA Travelling Human Rights Documentary Film Festival traditionally starts in October. This year inhabitants of more than 200 cities and towns is Ukraine will be able to see the best documentaries about human rights. Docudays UA Travelling Festival will last from October till December and will take place in Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kirovohrad, Lviv, Luhansk, Poltava, Kherson, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi, Ternopil, Volyn, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, Odesa, Sumy, Zakarpattia, Mykolaiv, Rivne and Khmelnytsky regions, as well as Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
Festival film screenings and discussions will take place in cinema halls, houses of culture, universities, schools, youth clubs, bookstores, libraries, as well as institutions of penitentiary system. Viewers will get an opportunity to talk to well-known human rights defenders, cultural workers and artists.
“Beyond illusions” is this the central theme of this year’s festiva.l Countries and nations are leaving many of their illusions behind nowadays. The illlusion of stability of the world order that democratic countries have agreed on is falling apart. The world’s illusion about weak Ukraine and Ukrainians not capable of self-organization is gone too. Ukrainians are facing the fundamental question as well: isn’t it time to get rid of the illusion that it’s possible to reform the country without reforming basic relations on economic, social and cultural levels?
That’s why this year’s Travelling Docudays UA offers program full of films that raise problems common to Ukraine as well as to the rest of the world. Those are stories about migration processes (“Road of a Migrant” by Olena Fedyuk), post-war rehabilitation (“Of Men and War” by Laurent Bécue-Renard), unacceptance of the difference (“Call Me Marianna” by Karolina Bielawska and “Pervert Park” by Frida Barkfors and Lasse Barkfors), women’s activism during authoritarian regimes (“Hooligan Sparrow” by Nanfu Wang and “Solidarity According to Women” by Marta Dzido and Piotr Śliwowski) and many others. All in all, viewers of Travelling Festival will see 40 best documentary films from Ukraine and world.
For the first time at this year’s festival: DOCU/UKRAINE national competition. Travelling festival will present 9 short films by young Ukrainian directors. Some of them live and study abroad, others don’t even have professional education. Some of them are passionate about politics, others go deep into themselves. There are directors who are still learning, and those who have won awards at international film festivals. Each of them strives to answer the ultimate question: “What’s happening to us? What’s happening to me?”.
Travelling Docudays UA special events.
“The Living Fire” by Ostap Kostiuk screenings. An art documentary film about the life of shepherds in the Ukrainian Carpathians, and the fate of traditional crafts against the background of modern change. In the last two years the film has won several awards at international film festivals and introduced present-day Ukrainian documentary films to the world.
“Encyclopaedia of the Maidan” documentary films cycle on tour presented by it’s director Serhiy Lysenko and the protagonists of the films. “Encyclopaedia of the Maidan” is a series of short stories about the outburst of civic activity in Ukraine. Maidan has been impressing the world for four months with ability of Ukrainians to unite as well as with creative, coordinated and effective actions that involved hundreds of thousands of volunteers all over Ukraine. The films’ heroes are human rights activists, volunteers, military doctors, journalists, bloggers, common people, who changed the reality of today’s Ukraine. Every hero or heroine has their own story, but all of them join together into a single narrative. Activism and civic initiatives are the only thing that can save us from "soviet" germs. They created that cancerous tumor, and now nearly all the society is dying of it. In our documentaries we focused on people who help to cure this disease”, says the director.
Festival’s partners in regions of Ukraine are 51 leading youth, non-governmental and human rights organizations and 205 film clubs of media education in human rights Docudays UA. Detailed program of regional screenings can be found on official Docudays UA Travelling Human Rights Documentary Film Festival website www.traveling.docudays.org.ua.
Travelling Festival’s objective
To promote popularization and development of documentary film and to raise the level of respect for human rights in Ukraine.
Travelling Festival’s mission
We create opportunities for every person in Ukraine to watch the most talented and present-day documentary films from all over the world. This contributes to development of critical thinking, creation of active citizen position, and appreciation of highest value of human dignity. By realizing our mission we promote popularization and development of documentary film and to increase the level of respect for human rights in Ukraine.
The Festival is non-political and non-commercial
Organizers
Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union;
Non-Government Оrganization "Pivden";
Charitable organization “Charity and Health Found”;
NGO “Center for Modern Information Technologies and Visual Arts”.
Partners
Ukrainian State Film Agency;
Human Rights Film Network.
International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Docudays UA is supported by Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine