Suspilne Media

The Vertep Imp embarks on a journey through memory, through the darkness of censorship and arrests, to restore the voices of young and audacious dissidents, together with new, unexpected friends.

Filmed during one night in July 2025 by forty filmmakers and hundreds of citizens, The Illusion of a Quiet Night paints a vast collective portrait of war-torn Ukraine. Between fear and exhaustion, moments of joy and scenes of the ordinary day to day, we watch as life goes on in spite of everything, witnessing the resilience of a nation gripped by uncertainty.

A documentary about the outstanding Ukrainian philosopher Hryhoriy Skovoroda. In the company of well-known writers, historians, philosophers, folklorists, psychologists and neurophysiologists, the film's authors carry out a kind of investigation into the mysterious twists and turns of fate in Skovoroda's biography, taking the audience through various places and epochs associated with the formation and work of the philosopher. The film tells about medieval European secret societies, famous mystics and alchemists who were Skovoroda's contemporaries. The authors will reveal the secret of Blaise Pascal's mysterious vision and Socrates' otherworldly "daimon", help to unravel the symbols depicted on the walls of ancient temples, and even allow you to touch the mystical abilities of Indian yogis. Prominent scientists will help to better understand the Frying Pan phenomenon, revealing previously unknown aspects of the human brain.

This film, marking the 130th anniversary of Oleksandr Dovzhenko's birth, reveals the artist's controversial path—from his first attempts at cinema to the creation of masterpieces that became symbols of Ukrainian poetic cinema. The authors show his ability to maneuver between creative ambitions and the political demands of the era, remaining a unique figure in cultural history. 

In this haunting and visually inventive documentary, a spectral voice drifts through time and memory to trace the Maidan revolution and the roots of resistance in Ukraine.

The film tells the story of the development of Ukrainian dubbing. Until 2006, there was almost no Ukrainian dubbing on the big screen. According to the film's screenwriter Alina Stepanets, it is a great achievement that over 90% of films in theatres are now dubbed into Ukrainian. The secrets of working on Ukrainian dubbing are discussed in the film by such well-known film figures as film distributor and owner of the dubbing studio Bohdan Batrukh, dubbing director Olha Fokina, actors Yevhen Malukha, Yurii Kovalenko, Oleh Mykhailiuta (Fahot), translator Oleksa Nehrebetskyi and many others. In addition, the film's characters will recall working on the Ukrainian dubbing of their first films, Cars and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Documentary that follows Go_A’s lead singer Kateryna Pavlenko in the build up to Eurovision 2021.

The nearest town to the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone is Ivankiv, home to about 8,000 people. From February 24 to April 1, Ivankiv was under Russian occupation. The occupiers bombed the museum of Maria Prymachenko, a world-renowned local artist. Despite air raid alarms, attacks by Russian drones and missiles, power outages, and the ongoing threat from neighboring Belarus, the town continues to live. Our story is about the residents of Ivankiv — more precisely, the children who study at the Maria Prymachenko School of Arts, where they practice music and visual arts. While creating paintings in the style of the famous artist, the children share their experiences of surviving the occupation and how the war affects their lives.

The artists Zhanna Kadyrova and Denys Ruban spent two weeks in the basement of their house, fleeing from the rocket attacks and sabotage groups of the occupiers that were flooding the outskirts of Kyiv at the time, and then decided to evacuate to western Ukraine. Local residents of one of the Zakarpattia villages sheltered them in a picturesque house on a hillside, next to a river. Doing what you know and love for the benefit of Ukraine is the best thing an artist can do in times of war. This is how the Palianytsia project was born - a series of objects made of stones cut by a mountain river. Zhanna sells them to patrons and galleries and uses the proceeds to buy bulletproof vests, radios, thermal imagers and other things our soldiers need. Before she sends her ‘loaves’ to Venice for the Biennale, Zhanna holds an exhibition in the village where she now lives, so that the people who have taken her in can be the first to see her art.

A year ago, on 29 December 2019, prisoners were exchanged with the self-proclaimed ‘LPR’ and ‘DPR’. Among the Ukrainians who returned home were journalist Stanislav Aseyev, tanker Bohdan Pantiushenko, and human rights activist Andriy Yarovoi. Four months earlier, on 7 September, Crimeans Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko were released from Russian colonies. We spoke to the former prisoners about their first year of freedom.

A documentary story about the participation and victory at the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 by the Ukrainian band Kalush Orkestra.

Makariv is a small village near Kyiv. In February and March, there were battles here as the Russian army was on its way to Kyiv. Many buildings were damaged by shelling, including the local fire station. Volunteers from the organisation Building Ukraine Together set up a camp to help the firefighters restore the building. They woke up, did exercises, had breakfast and repairs, and in the evening shared their experiences and their own stories. Artem's friend was killed in Tokmak in the first days of the war, Ira witnessed the death of her family in Irpin, Dasha's father is in the Ukrainian army, Yura left the camp early because he went to the funeral of his friend who died at the front. These stories are much deeper than they seem. Find out more about youth and war, about repairing without experience and a summer camp in a bombed-out village in the documentary story by Suspilne Culture.

An educational film about the birth, development, decline, persecution, and flourishing of the Ukrainian language. It shows how it was formed, changed, filled with borrowed words and formed its own neologisms. The film is divided into five historically important periods: Rus, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Hetmanate, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union. Each era “spoke” its own language, and here you will hear for the first time how it sounded in different centuries. The presenter, a famous theater and film actor Oleksii Hnatkovskyi, will guide the viewer through the historical periods. In a simple, accurate, sometimes humorous way, he will tell how our language developed during the periods of creation, development, division, fierce wars and total bans.

The film tells three personal stories about the famous bicycle. The film's protagonists are a cultural manager from Kyiv, an engineer from Kharkiv, and a utility worker from the Carpathians. These are very different people, but they are all united by the fact that they ride the Ukraine bicycle.

A documentary project that shows viewers behind the scenes of this cultural exchange and explores the current processes of integrating Ukrainian culture into the European context. The heroes of the project are the participants and visitors of the festival, who demonstrate with their own stories the unique connection and cultural integration of Ukraine into the plane of Liverpool, one of the cultural capitals of Europe. In particular, Sarah Fisher, director of Liverpool's Open eye gallery, Yuliia Kurinna, a volunteer and displaced person from Nova Kakhovka, and actor and director Yurii Radionov will share their thoughts.

A story about Ukrainian monumental art of the Soviet period in Mariupol. Photographer Stanislav Ivanov lived in Mariupol all his life. He studied history, streets, houses, monumental art. Some of the mosaics are more than half a century old. The "Tree of Life" panel - created by a team of artists led by Alla Gorska and Viktor Zaretsky - was bricked up after the death of the artist and reopened in 2008. This and other stories were collected by Stanislav Ivanov and art critic Oleksandr Chernov in the album "All Shades of Mariupol Mosaics". After February 24, 2022, the mosaicists, like hundreds of thousands of residents of Mariupol, became hostages of the occupying forces of the Russian Federation. In the film, we are transported to peaceful Mariupol in December 2021 and, together with Stanislav, explore the city and its mosaics, transported to a place where time and the elements seemed to be the greatest threats.

Slavik is a young Kharkiv ceramist who often works with naked models while creating his sculptures. He is a Pentecostal believer and faces rejection of his work by the religious community to which he belongs. He decides to find out if his art is a sin. He meets several priests of different confessions, artists and the editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine to find out where the moral line is between temptation and creativity. Furthermore, he decides to create a sculpture of a blind girl being blindfolded himself in order "not to be tempted" by the body of the model.

At the outbreak of war, two Ukrainian women find themselves in Europe. Tetiana, 45, lives in Poznan and works in a spaghetti shop while learning the language. Meanwhile, 29-year-old Alyona is settling down in Weidenberg, forcing herself to learn German to distract herself. Her husband is at war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian women do not know each other, but their status binds them as IDPs. After 1,5 years of waiting, it's time to make a choice - to stay abroad or to return to Ukraine, where the war is ongoing. Each woman will make her own choice.

"Hudaks aren't people" is a line from a traditional Transcarpathian song. Thus, hudaks, the village musicians who play at weddings, have long been separated from the rest of the people. It works the same way at a wedding: they have a separate table from the guests, separate transportation, and special treatment. They are most often self-taught musicians who inherited their profession from their father or grandfather. They are usually the "stars" in the village, people talk about them, because life around them tends to be in full swing, even when they seem to be surrounded by ordinary rural life: milking a cow, feeding a goat, herding sheep, slaughtering pigs for Christmas, mowing hay, or going to the Czech Republic for a "stroiky".

This is a story about generations and the importance of preserving historical memory. The grandmother of one of the protagonists, Svitlana Zalishchuk, left behind a diary in which she recorded her memories of the terrible times. Veronika, a 12-year-old girl from Uman, and her mother made a film for the Autumn on Pluto 2.0 project about her grandmother Ksenia Logvyniuk, who told us where people found food and how they escaped starvation. Sasha, another 12-year-old protagonist of the film, did not find her great-grandmother alive, but she recreated her relative's experiences based on her father's stories.