What the Short? – Yakogo Shorta? – Якого Шорта? – Short Films out of competition
A fresh mix of Ukrainian short films that find humour, absurdity, and tenderness in unexpected places. Unconventional, funny, and eccentric, these films are united by talent and true love of cinema.
Short Film Competition: Program II — Unexpected Natures
A rock speaks, an invisible worker dances herself into view, a filmmaker confronts the people he has turned into cinema, and wildlife inhabits the toxic remains of Soviet industry. Moving between animation, documentary, essay, and performance, these films descend underground — into buried histories, hidden lives, and damaged landscapes. Between destruction and renewal, they reveal life reorganizing itself within the ruins.
Short Film Competition: Program I — Homeward
What does it mean to move homeward when home has been occupied, transformed, or left behind? These films follow uncertain passages across physical, emotional, and temporal distances: a man chooses to remain in his threatened hometown; a son waits for news from his mother in occupied territory; a child attempts to return home through the mechanical body of a robotic dog; and a granddaughter reaches across decades to reconnect with a family history shaped by displacement and war. Homecoming is no longer a single movement toward a place, but a fragile negotiation between memory and absence, grief and continuity, those who remain, those who return, and those who can return only through remembrance.