Films that Bring the Victory Closer

Not even rocket fire could stop the team behind Ukraine’s most venerable documentary film festival from putting on Docudays UA in 2022. They even ran a competition to sponsor the production of brand-new work: Civil Pitch 2.0 films would receive financial support and mentorship, and had to be shot within the year. More than 150 projects competed, and Hot Docs proudly presents the world premiere of all four winners: Pavlo Dorohoi’s 89 Days takes us into a Kharkiv subway-station-turned-bomb-shelter-turned-back-into-a-subway-station; in Under the Wing of a Night, director Lesia Diak, an alumna of the Doc Nomads master's program, immerses herself in 11-year-old Olesia's new life in Belgium as she waits for her father's nightly call from back home; Halyna Lavrinets’s Guests from Kharkiv watches activist Nelia try to resettle city-dwellers into rural Ukrainian life; and Anastasiia Tykha’s Our Robo Family celebrates the children’s robotics and programming group Roboclub Vuhledar. Enjoy the absolutely freshest Ukrainian documentary talent of 2023! Myrocia Watamaniuk

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