European Film

Selected Major Ukranian Films — Online and Physical Viewing Options through UC Library Search 

Arsenal (dir. Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1929)

"The film concerns an episode in the Russian Civil War in 1918 in which the Kiev Arsenal January Uprising of workers aided the besieging Bolshevik army against the Ukrainian national Parliament Central Rada who held legal power in Ukraine at the time."

Earth (dir. Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930)

"One of the undisputed masterpieces of the cinema, no single viewing of EARTH will ever reveal all of its poetic brilliance. An old farmer dies, his grandson has a new vision to bring prosperity to his poor Ukraine village."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (dir. Sergei Parajanov, 1965)

"Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is a 1965 Ukrainian film by Soviet-Armenian filmmaker, Sergei Parajanov, that is based on the novel by Ukrainian writer, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky. This haunting film is full of deeply moving imagery and gives a detailed portrayal of Ukrainian culture in the Carpathians. It was Parajanov’s first major work and earned him international acclaim. To this day it is remembered as an art house favorite as well as one of the relatively few Soviet movies to be produced in Ukrainian."

My Joy (dir. Sergei Loznitsa, 2010)

"A truck driver takes a wrong turn and finds himself lost in a bleak Russian underworld, struggling to survive amidst increasingly violent reminders of the country’s dark history."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

See full list of videos from independent filmmakers on the Babylon '13 YouTube channel.

Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom (dir. Evgeny Afineevsky, 2015)

"A documentary on the unrest in Ukraine during 2013 and 2014, as student demonstrations supporting European integration grew into a violent revolution calling for the resignation of President Viktor F. Yanukovich."

Bitter Harvest (dir. George Mendeluk, 2017)

"Set in 1930s Ukraine, as Stalin advances the ambitions of communists in the Kremlin, young artist Yuri battles to save his lover Natalka from the Holodomor, the death-by-starvation program that ultimately killed millions of Ukrainians."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

Donbass (dir. Sergei Loznitsa, 2018)

"In the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, mid-2010s: a hybrid war takes place, involving an open armed conflict alongside killings and robberies on a mass scale perpetrated by Russian-separatist gangs."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

The Road to Babi Yar (dir. Boris Maftsir, 2018)

"With the invasion of Germany into the territory of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, a new stage in the history of the Shoah began, characterized by the massacres of Jews, exemplified in the Ukraine. "The road to Babi Yar" shows the events of the first 100 days of the occupation of Ukraine, during which the Nazis, with the participation of local residents, began killing Jews directly in their places of residence, as well as the evolution of the mass murder system in hundreds of killing sites, symbolized by Babi Yar. Conversations with historians, local residents - eyewitnesses to those events and Jewish survivors of the Shoah, presented in the film, allow us to recreate a comprehensive and painful picture of the fate of the Jews of Ukraine during the Shoah."

Bad Roads (dir. Natalya Vorozhbit, 2020)

"Four short stories are set along the roads of Donbass during the war. There are no safe spaces and no one can make sense of just what is going on. Even as they are trapped in the chaos, some manage to wield authority over others."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

The Earth is Blue as an Orange (dir. Iryna Tsilyk, 2020)

"Krasnohorivka: a town on the front lines of the war-torn region of Eastern Ukraine. When poet/filmmaker Iryna Tsilyk first visits the Trofymchuk-Gladky family home, she is surprised by what she finds: while the outside world is made up of bombings and chaos, single mother Anna and her four children are managing to keep their home as a safe haven, full of life and full of light."

UCLA students, staff, and faculty access through Kanopy. Log into the campus VPN or proxy server to view video.

Babyn Yar. Context (dir. Sergey Loznitsa, 2021). Links to documentary films available on project webpage.

"Nazi troops massacre 30,000 Jews over a three-day period in September 1941."

Occupied (dir. Dmytro Bahnenko, 2022)

"On March 1 Dmytro Bahnenko, a journalist in Kherson, southern Ukraine, watched Russian tanks roll down his street. As his world, like many Ukrainians’, turned upside down, he secretly started filming everything around him, sensing history in the making, and sharing the footage with BBC Eye. . . [A]s the Russians make their intentions clearer, Dmytro and his wife Lidia struggle to shelter their five-year-old daughter Ksusha from what is happening. The documentary is filled with colourful detail of how the young family find ways of coping as their city is steadily stripped of its Ukrainian identity."

Year - A Documentary Project (dir. Dmytro Komarov, 2023). 

"Dmytro Komarov was the first journalist to witness and film the horrors of the just-liberated towns of Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel. He saw the first emotions of people immediately after the de-occupation of Kyiv region, Kharkiv region, and Kherson region. The documentary project "Year" by the team "World inside out" is Dmytro Komarov's author's view of the war from angles that you won't see in the news." 

Includes Part One and Part Two. 

20 Days in Mariupol (dir. Mstyslav Chernov, 2023)

Winner of the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. 

"The award-winning documentary 20 Days in Mariupol follows Chernov as he and his Ukrainian AP colleagues become trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol, struggling to continue their work documenting atrocities of the Russian invasion. The last international journalists remaining in the city as Russian forces close in, Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and field producer Vasilisa Stepanenko capture what become some of the most defining images of the war: dying children, mass graves, the bombing of a maternity hospital, and more."