Ukrainian film festival 2025
Through love and loss
This year’s Ukrainian Film Festival returns with the theme ‘Through Love and Loss’, exploring powerful stories of care and courage, as well as the love and grief Ukrainians are living through today. The programme will showcase new contemporary feature films, documentaries, and shorts from Ukraine.
This year’s line-up offers a powerful panorama of modern Ukrainian cinema. In The Editorial Office, Roman Bondarchuk takes us to the wild steppes of southern Ukraine, where an idealistic young researcher stumbles into a storm of corruption, fake news, and looming war. From the Oscar-winning team behind 20 Days in Mariupol, Mstyslav Chernov’s 2000 Meters to Andriivka delivers a searing frontline portrait of soldiers fighting for every inch of their land. Maria Stoianova’s Fragments of Ice blends family home videos and history to trace Ukraine’s journey from the late Soviet years to the present day, revealing how the past echoes into today’s reality.
Dmytro Moiseiev’s Grey Bees, adapted from Andrey Kurkov’s acclaimed novel with the same title, offers an intimate, bittersweet look at life in the war-torn ‘grey zone.’ And the short film programme from the KISFF, Love Letters from Ukraine, captures moments of tenderness, longing, and resilience in the most unexpected places, reminding us that even in war, love finds a way.
The 2025 Ukrainian Film Festival is curated by the Ukrainian Institute London’s Programme Curator, Olga Sydorushkina, and is supported by Curzon and Film Hub London, managed by Film London. The festival is proud to be a partner of the BFI Film Audience Network, funded by The National Lottery.
Full programme
18 September The Editorial Office (Roman Bondarchuk, 2024) 126 minutes
19 September Grеy Bees (Dmytro Moiseiev, 2024) 102 minutes
20 September Love letters from Ukraine (short films selection) 91 minutes
20 September 2000 Meters to Andriivka (Mstyslav Chernov, 2025) 108 minutes
21 September Fragments of Ice (Maria Stoianova, 2024) 95 minutes
All films are followed by Q&As with the directors.
The Editorial Office
18 September
Director: Roman Bondarchuk
Genre: Drama Year: 2024 Duration: 126 min
Language: Ukrainian with English subtitles
In the wild steppes of southern Ukraine, a young nature researcher called Yura is looking for an endangered species of groundhog but instead witnesses a crime. Eager to expose the truth, Yura takes his photo evidence to the local newspaper’s editorial office.
However, he quickly realises that nobody there cares about pursuing justice. While a big war is looming over the horizon, Yura’s naive worldview is splintering in a storm of fake news, rigged political elections, and mysterious cult rituals. On his quest, the hero is about to find out who he really is—an endangered species of a good man or just a loser?
Followed by a Q&A with the director Roman Bondarchuk in person.
Grey Bees
19 September
Director: Dmytro Moiseiev
Genre: Drama Year: 2024 Duration: 102 min
Language: Ukrainian and Russian with English subtitles
In the ‘grey zone’ of war, in a small village without electricity, only two childhood foes remained. Amidst shells that occasionally whistle over the village and unwelcome armed visitors, the retired neighbours lead their quiet, modest lives, meeting now and then for uneasy but necessary conversation.
Their lives hadn’t turned out as they’d hoped, and both have time to reflect on that. In the heart of the conflict, they strive to build a peaceful existence, but everything unravels when a Russian sniper shows up in the village.
Followed by a Q&A with writer Andrey Kurkov in person, whose novel Grеy Bees was adapted into the film.
20 September
Genre: Short films Years: 2018 to 2023 Duration: 91 min
Language: Ukrainian and Russian with English subtitles
Love transcends gender, distance, and age—it arrives unexpectedly, often in the most unusual and bizarre ways. Every sensation is heightened, every emotion intensified, especially when love finds you in the midst of war. These five stories from Ukraine invite you to experience the thrill and the sorrow that love can bring—intimacy, appreciation, and the grief of loss.
Teatralna station (Alina Panasenko, 2022) 16 min
Tymofii is a young pickpocket, living an ordinary life until he unexpectedly falls for a station officer at Teatralna metro station in Kyiv.
Deep Love (Mykyta Lyskov, 2019) 14 min
This film is made up of episodes that aren’t connected by a traditional storyline or style but share a consistent mood and meaning. It’s shot entirely without dialogue, unfolding as a clever, contemplative meditation on human relationships, expressed purely through sound.
Deep Water (Anna Dudko, 2021) 6 min
A lonely, chubby mermaid secretly watches the human world through water pipes. One day, she falls in love with a man and, blinded by passion, enters his apartment to satisfy her burning desires.
In Joy (Marina Roschina, 2018) 28 min
Kate is a young single mother who falls in love with a man but lacks the courage to tell him she has a son. As their relationship quickly deepens, the truth becomes harder to share. She soon faces a difficult choice between her own happiness and her responsibilities as a mother.
Storks Always Come Home (Halyna Koziutynska, 2023) 27 min
Gala and Viktor are searching for their own Heaven. Even amid the war. They buy an abandoned house in the Carpathian Mountains and start repairing it. It’s a place of peace and calmness, where they can grow their own food, be silent, be defenceless, and drink coffee while looking at the mountains and a stork’s nest. But winter comes. The apple tree in the yard freezes, and the war reaches Heaven.
Followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.
2000 Meters to Andriivka
20 September
Director: Mstyslav Chernov
Genre: Documentary Year: 2025 Duration: 108 min
Language: Ukrainian and Russian with English subtitles
From the Oscar-winning team behind 20 Days in Mariupol, 2000 Meters to Andriivka documents the toll of the Russia-Ukraine war from a personal and devastating vantage point.
Following his historic account of the civilian toll in Mariupol, Mstyslav Chernov turns his lens towards Ukrainian soldiers—who they are, where they came from, and the impossible decisions they face in the trenches as they fight for every inch of their land.
Amid a failing counteroffensive in 2023, Chernov and his AP colleague, Alex Babenko, follow a Ukrainian brigade battling through approximately one mile of a heavily fortified forest on their mission to liberate the Russian-occupied village of Andriivka.
Weaving together original footage, intensive Ukrainian Army bodycam video and powerful moments of reflection, 2000 Meters to Andriivka reveals with haunting intimacy, the further the soldiers advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realise that, for them, this war may never end.
Followed by a Q&A with the director Mstyslav Chernov in person.
Fragments of Ice
21 September
Director: Maria Stoianova
Genre: Drama Year: 2024 Duration: 95 min
Language: Ukrainian and Russian with English subtitles
Fragments of Ice captures personal, political, and social developments, edited together from fifteen VHS tapes covering the period 1986 to 1994. These include video diaries shot by the director’s father, a champion figure-skater, during his foreign tours with the Ukrainian Ensemble Ballet on Ice, as well as scenes from his own home.
As we follow director Maria Stoianova growing up, we witness the parallel collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine’s journey towards regaining its independence, followed by its transition to a market economy. Expectations reflected in the glamorous footage of the West, shot by Stoianova’s father on his tours, contrast starkly with the home video images of peeling walls, collapsed ceilings, and cockroaches in the family flat.
Fragments of Ice portrays both the broad sweep of history and its deep impact on real people’s lives, culminating in a new upheaval: the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. ‘The End of History never happened,’ Stoianova reflects. ‘It froze and caught up with us years later.’
Followed by a Q&A with the director Maria Stoianova