6 recent films showcasing Ukraine's culture

The films in the series "Perspectives of Ukrainian Cinema" are a reminder that the war in Ukraine didn't only start in 2022. Many works address the conflict that began in 2014 in eastern Ukraine. Set in 2025, Valentyn Vasyanovych's anticipation film suddenly feels prescient, as it portrays the aftermath of a land in ruins, with former soldiers dealing with PTSD while exhuming war corpses.

Maryna Er Gorbach's drama is set in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border, where a couple is expecting their first child. But following the shooting of the MH17 flight, war erupts in the Donbas and their house gets bombed. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January and won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlinale.

This documentary features a kaleidoscope of personal videos filmed by Ukrainian soldiers on the front line of the war with Russia. Their raw footage conveys the feeling that their lives might end at any moment. The work by director Roman Liubiy is also a reflection on the challenges of portraying the traumatic experience of war in film.

This documentary, directed by Iryna Tsilyk, focuses on a single mother and her four children living in the war zone of Donbas in Ukraine. But while their world is turned upside down by bombings, the family shoots a movie about their experience, turning the document into an extraordinary tribute to the power of cinema in times of disaster.

An interpreter gets lost in the southern Ukrainian steppe during an inspection tour of military checkpoints near the Crimean border. Roman Bondarchuk's film is actually a weird road trip playing on social absurdity and magic realism. A "Moviegram" critic described the work as "the most Ukrainian film in recent years."

Antonio Lukich's comedy-drama centers on a lanky 22-year-old trying to build his career as a sound engineer. An unusual recording assignment in Transcarpathia could be his ticket out of Ukraine to a more attractive life in Canada. But annoyingly, his mother joins him in his endeavor. A humorous reflection on identity and mother-son relations, "My Thoughts Are Silent" won several festival awards.