Docudays UA 2025: Mining Meaning
From rare metals to rare lives, Ukraine's human rights film fest redefines national value.
As Ukraine pushes through its third year of war, the 22nd edition of Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, held from 6–13 June 2025, in Kyiv, adopts the theme «Rare Resource.» This concept, inspired by recent geopolitical agreements on rare earth metals, expands beyond material extraction to explore the nation's invaluable human, cultural, and ecological assets. The festival opens with Gar O’Rourke’s documentary Sanatorium, which examines the historic Kuyalnyk resort in the Odesa region, symbolising Ukraine’s unmined, living resources: its medical workers.
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News
DOCU/UKRAINE 2025 showcases five groundbreaking films amid a flourishing national cinema
Docudays UA 2025 opens with a focus on Ukraine’s most valuable asset: its people
Interview
«Democracy is impossible if a society lacks resources—especially human resources»
Festival Director Yuliia Kovalenko delves into the motivations behind this year's theme, the challenges of organising a festival amid ongoing conflict, and the resilience of Ukrainian documentary cinema.
Films
Bright Future
Director: Andra MacMasters
The sensory and ideological layers of a forgotten Cold War festival, exploring fleeting solidarity, ideological discord, and the fragility of socialist dreams.
Dad’s Lullaby
Director: Lesia Diak
Collateral damage far from the frontlines of Ukraine's long struggle in the east with separatists and now Russian armed forces is seen in Lesia Diak's moving focus on a family torn apart by war.
Limits of Europe
Director: Apolena Rychlíková
The invisible economic labour of Eastern European workers.
Silent Trees
Director: Agnieszka Zwiefka
The plight of refugees trapped by geopolitical manoeuvres at the EU border.
Songs of Slow Burning Earth
Director: Olha Zhurba
Olha Zhurba's meditative take on the war avoids frontline images to show how the conflict affects ordinary people.
The Propagandist
Director: Luuk Bouwman
The rise and fall of a filmmaker who reshaped Dutch cinema by serving Nazi propaganda during World War II.
Trains
Director: Maciej Drygas
Maciej Drygas's entrancing Trains is a mesmerising journey through much of the 20th century by rail, accompanied by a subtly intense soundtrack.
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