DOCUDAYS UA: Ukrainian Documentary Shorts Screening

Celebrate Ukrainian filmmakers determined to tell the truth: four short documentaries from Docudays UA and a Q&A with editor Kseniia Opria.
About this Event

Join us as we celebrate the determination of Ukrainian documentary scene with this collection of short films, presented in collaboration with Docudays UA, one of Ukraine's leading human rights documentary film festivals. These are honest, intimate and often unexpectedly tender stories, made by people who refuse to look away. Afterward, stay for a conversation with Kseniia Opria, editor at Docudays, about what it takes to make and share documentary cinema in wartime.
DOCUDAYS UA
is Ukraine's International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival. Its mission is to give everyone in Ukraine the chance to see talented, relevant human rights documentaries from around the world, to encourage active citizenship and respect for human dignity, and to support Ukraine's film industry. Its vision is simple: a society of free people.

Films are in Ukrainian with English subtitles.

Date: October 23, 2026

Time: door open at 12pm, screening starts at 12:30pm

Location: QUAD CINEMA (34 W 13th St, New York, NY 10011)

Agenda
Witness. Place of Birth
Host: Marina Kronhlevska

Info: At the start of the full-scale invasion, the city of Chernihiv was under siege by Russian forces for 37 days. Due to the encirclement and constant shelling by Russian troops, the city was left without access to water, food, or medicine. Under these conditions, women continued to give birth at the Chernihiv Maternity Hospital. The film’s protagonists share their experiences of giving birth in a bomb shelter, sharing a single cake with raisins for two weeks, and rationing medications when it was unclear whether more would be available in the near future.

Ember
Host: Vladyslav Kalenskyi

Info: In 2022, as Russian forces reached the outskirts of Kyiv, an elderly couple lost their home and everything in it. Isolated and vulnerable, they rely on the kindness of neighbors to survive. But with the front line drawing nearer, they have to make the ultimate sacrifice: abandon their home forever to escape with their lives.

Sequela
Host: Alla Mitiukova

Info: Rescued by a combat medic after a severe injury on the frontline, a Ukrainian soldier undergoes rehabilitation, confronting physical and emotional challenges on his path back to civilian life, driven by a single wish: to return home.

Homecoming
Host: Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei

Info: A few years after fleeing Ukraine, following the Russian invasion, a boy returns home via a robotic dog, his mechanical avatar, which he controls from his room in Poland. Through this remote presence, he relives memories and reconnects with his past — a connection that now depends on a fragile video stream that could be cut off at any moment.