UKRAINE: KYIV 15 YEARS IN SHORTS

Screened:
WED 21/10, 21:00 FYRIS
SAT 24/10, 17:00 UKK

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Ukrainians are tired of saying it, but it remains true: we live in historic times. Over the 15 years of the Kyiv International Short Film Festival (KISFF), Ukraine has lived through the Revolution of Dignity, Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territories, and the full-scale invasion.

A new wave of Ukrainian cinema emerged alongside these events. For KISFF’s 15th anniversary, we invited friends of the festival — critics, journalists, film scholars, and curators — to select five short films that reflect how both Ukrainian cinema and Ukrainian society have changed between 2010 and 2025.

Kyiv: 15 Years in Shorts moves from the lingering structures of the Soviet past and the uneasy process of redefining a country’s identity, through stories of institutional neglect and belonging, to films shaped directly by Russia’s full-scale war. Together, the works show cinema shifting from observing an inherited reality to trying to process, reconstruct, and make sense of one that is still being violently transformed.

The programme is therefore not simply a selection of five acclaimed shorts, but a fragmented portrait of Ukraine across fifteen years — and of a cinema whose language has had to change along with the country itself.

Curator: Sasha Prokopenko

NUCLEAR WASTE

Sergey and Sveta live in Chernobyl. He is a truck driver at a radioactive waste plant while she works at a radioactive decontamination station. Their work and life are dictated by one unchangeable rhythm.

Ukraine 2012 / 25:00 / Director: Myroslav Slabospytskyi

DEEP LOVE

Deep love has finally happened in Ukraine.

Ukraine 2019 / 14:00 / Director: Mykyta Lyskov

DAD’S SNEAKERS

An immersive insight into the last hours of 13-year-old Sasha’s life in a boarding school for children deprived of parental care. He is one of the luckiest – an American family finally adopted him. Today he will move to another country forever, but there’s something that doesn’t let him go.

Ukraine 2021 / 18:33 / Director: Olha Zhurba

ADDITIONAL SCENES

On Day 377 of the Russian-Ukrainian War, in Kyiv, a man debates with his wife about the pillows — which one is for sleeping and which one is not. And why should we make a film about the war, anyway?

Ukraine 2024 / 14:44 / Director: Roman Khimei, Yarema Malashchuk

I DIED IN IRPIN

24 February 2022 my boyfriend and I fled from Kyiv to Irpin. We spent 10 days in a city in blockade and managed to escape with the last evacuation convoy. Time passed, but the feeling that I died in Irpin has never left me since then. The film reconstructs this true story of survival through a personal and subjective lens.

Ukraine, Czech Republic 2024 / 11:22 / Director: Anastasia Falileieva

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