SECTION: Spotlight: Ukraine

 33FFC Sektions Button SPOTLIGHT

Ukrainian cinema continues to be one of the most creativefilm landscapes in Europe. With Spotlight: Ukraine, the FFC is putting Ukrainian cinema in the spotlight for the third time since 2016. But Ukraine's presence is also an integral part of the FFC programme in other sections: in the Competition, in the Spectrum and in EcoEast.

On the Saturday of the festival, the "Ukrainian Day" offers the opportunity to "look through" Ukrainian films from early in the morning until late in the evening; Ukrainian refugees are given the opportunity to attend screenings of the entire FFC programme on this day without paying an admission fee. A panel discussion on 10.11. will discuss how filmmakers from Ukraine deal with the challenges - threatened by enemy fire, themselves as soldiers at the front, confronted with considerable logistical and financial constraints and emotional challenges that can hardly be put into words. 

The Ukrainian feature films and documentaries at this year's FFC show how Ukrainian filmmakers deal with their everyday life in a permanent state of emergency, how young Ukrainians try to live a somehow "normal" everyday life despite the war, with all its usual fractures between coming-of-age and homophobia, mother-daughter relationship, cultural heritage and criminal case. And the threats, fears and crimes of a war you thought would never happen again. In a life in which they are confronted with enormous psychological stress that could foreseeably lead to widespread collective traumatisation of society.

The presence of Ukrainian films at the FFC shows how broad the range of topics is that filmmakers from the country plagued by the Russian war of aggression deal with - and how relevant their films are also outside the country whose everyday life and soul they illuminate in depth and with a mixture of investigative ambition and willpower, sadness and - that too - lightness.

Cold Waves

Cold Waves

RĂZBOI PE CALEA UNDELOR

Alexandru Solomun
RO/DE/LU / 2007 / 106 min
Radio Free Europe, which broadcast from Munich during the Cold War, was a thorn in the side of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu's real-socialist Romania. An enthralling documentary about the station's Romanian editorial team, financed first by the CIA and ...
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EAGLES FROM ŢAGA EAGLES FROM ŢAGA

EAGLES FROM ŢAGA EAGLES FROM ŢAGA

Vulturii din Țaga

Adina Popescu/ Iulian Manuel Gharvas
RO/SK / 2022 / 74 min
Sometimes everything just seems to go against him: the weather, the referee, his wife and even his own players. Manager Nelu holds his football team together with a mixture of passion and defiance. And yet the Eagles from Țaga, Transylvania, are ...
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Immaculate

Immaculate

Imaculat

Monica Stan/ George Chiper-Lillemark
RO / 2021 / 114 min
Alone amongst junkies, Daria defends her feigned innocence against the sexual advances of her fellow inmates, yet soon comes to find that her special treatment comes at a price in this mysterious milieu study of a clinic for heroin addicts told from ...
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OCCASIONAL SPIES

OCCASIONAL SPIES

Spioni de ocazie

Oana Giurgiu
RO / 2021 / 118 min
Unusual espionage: In 1943, the British secret service hired the services of eastern Europeans who had emigrated to Palestine with the aim of having them engage in espionage activities in their former home countries. They were to help track down ...
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R.M.N.

R.M.N.

R.M.N.

Cristian Mungiu
RO/FR/BE / 2022 / 125 min
A spectral social drama set in a Romanian mountain village. Half-Roma Matthias hastily returns from Germany, where he works in a slaughterhouse, since his son Rudi, upon seeing something mysterious in the local forest, has ceased speaking. Meanwhile, ...
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Swamp City

Swamp City

Swamp City

Bogdan Puslenghea/Ovidiu Zimcea
RO / 2021 / 105 min
Punk, Electro, New Wave, Hardcore: The underground music scene in Timişoara in the late 1980s and the 1990s. Rebellion against the authorities and creative protest, but also clashes between right and left. Tales and anecdotes that were repeated in ...
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MY FAMILY AND I

MY FAMILY AND I

MY FAMILY AND I

Gabriel Juduc
RO / 2021 / 4 min
Sleek fashion film with a profound message. Gabriel Juduc reflects on the values he was once taught and what remains of them. In elegant images he tells of the changing times and his path of acceptance above all of himself.
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INBETWEEN HOME

INBETWEEN HOME

STILLE POST

Brigitta Kanyaro
RO/AT / 2022 / 17 min
Romanian Marinela relies on the translation skills of her daughter Ilinca for her official visit, but the 8-year-old has other plans. Full of colorful misunderstandings, a child's wishes meet her mother's existential worries.
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IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

ÎN NUMELE TATĂLUI

Vladimir Dembinski
RO / 2021 / 28 min
Dark psychological thriller set in a remote Transylvanian village. Since her mother disappeared, Emma lives alone with her evil father, but one day she thinks she saw her mother in the market crowd and begins to have doubts.
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DINCOLO

DINCOLO

DINCOLO

Luca Peres-Bota
RO / 2022 / 12 min
One phone call is enough to turn everything upside down. Having come to Belgium to earn money, Romanian Bogdan suddenly gets a call at work that his wife has been in an accident. But how can he be in two places at once?
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I AM DORIN

I AM DORIN

EU SUNT DORIN

Valeriu Andriuta
RO / 2020 / 23 min
Wild and humorous, the film tells of the clever but poor Dorin, who takes on the bachelor exam of a 'rich kid` for money. He has only one night to prepare, but on that very night a party troupe lands in his dorm room.
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ALONG CAME A PRINCE

ALONG CAME A PRINCE

Trecea un prinț călare

Cristina Grosan
RO / 2022 / 22 min
During a theater workshop for teenagers, young Alex gets into an intimate situation with an older girl. But is this really what he wanted? Annoyance, congratulations - Alex doesn't know what's happening to him with this reversal of gender roles.
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MIRACLE

MIRACLE

Miracol

Bogdan George Apetri
RO/CZ/LV / / 118 min
A stunning reinterpretation of the crime genre in two harrowing episodes. One tells of the beautiful Cristina, a 19-year-old nun who becomes the victim of a crime. The other follows Inspector Marius as he tries to reconstruct the crime. In doing so, ...
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LETTER OF FORGIVENESS

LETTER OF FORGIVENESS

BILET DE IERTARE

Alina Șerban
RO / 2020 / 14 min
Gripping historical drama in a short format. In the household of a wealthy Romanian noblewoman in 1855, Maria, a Roma slave, fights for the freedom of her son Dinca. Once the master of the house made her a promise, but then he died.
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