Description
UFFB Shorts: program I
Films in this programme
Off-time
Nata Metlukh · USA, Ukraine, Japan · 2025 · 11'
A data engineer rushes through life, believing multitasking saves time—but it only creates chaos. Despite his strict control over time, nothing gets done: his home is a mess, work overflows, and breakfast is always burnt. He discovers joy in life only when time breaks apart.
Nata Metlukh
Nata Metlukh is a Ukrainian-American animation artist based in California. With a background in applied mathematics and graphic design, she explores the absurdity of everyday life. Through exaggeration and deconstruction, she gives the familiar a slightly unusual twist. Her films have been showcased at international animation festivals, occasionally receiving recognition.
Prelude
Alina Panasenko · Ukraine · 2025 · 14'
While roaming through the streets of wartime Kyiv, Anna discreetly films men passing by. Her search for a one-night stand ends in an unexpected meeting with a soldier. Distant observation leads her into the unsettling collision with reality.
Alina Panasenko
Alina Panasenko is a director, screenwriter, b.2000 (Severodonetsk, Ukraine) and based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Member of Ukrainian Film Academy. Sarajevo Talents Alumna. In her practice she researches on the nature of image itself, as well as eroticism, political and social problematics within native Ukrainian context.
Night Shift
Megumi Lim · Ukraine · 2025 · 29'
In the still hours of Kharkiv's curfewed nights, a quiet resilience hums through its empty streets. Night Shift is a short film about people who work under the cover of darkness, navigating both routine and risk as Russia often attacks when residents try to sleep. The film explores how nighttime in Ukraine's second largest city has transformed because of war, its nightly hope that dawn will arrive quietly, and the human need to carry on.
Megumi Lim
Megumi Lim is a Kyiv-based documentary filmmaker from Singapore. She began her career as a video journalist at the Reuters bureau in Tokyo, and over the past decade - based in Tokyo and then Beijing - she reported on major news stories across Asia. She relocated to Ukraine in 2023, where she transitioned to storytelling through documentary film. NIGHT SHIFT is her debut short film and marks her first entry into film festivals.
Walk
Daria Zhuravel · Ukraine, Georgia · 2024 · 7'
This is an autobiographical story by Daria Zhuravel, dedicated to the childhood and those who are no longer with us, but whose presence accompanies us wherever we go.
Daria Zhuravel
Daria Zhuravel (she/her) is an emerging Ukrainian director. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from the I. K. Karpenko-Karyi Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television. Since 2022, she has been working in the film industry, participating in various programmes and workshops for filmmakers (Talents Nest at the Meeting Point Vilnius, Ji.hlava Academy, Visual Anthropology School, Caucasus Cinema Film Program, etc). She worked as an editor, assistant director, and researcher. In her artwork, she explores the themes of human vulnerability, the phenomenon of chance, and identity issues.
Additional scenes
Roman Khimei, Yarema Malashchuk · Ukraine · 2025 · 17'
From the very beginning of the Russian attack on Ukraine, we began to ask ourselves “What is normality today?”. We decided to contact Pavlo Aldoshyn, an actor, who at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, joined the Ukrainian army. Pavlo's last role before the full-scale war was the lead in the action movie “Sniper: The White Raven”. We invited Pavlo to come to Kyiv from the frontline as a soldier and portray a civilian. The change in perception of reality that Pavlo is confronted with becomes literal: for Pavlo, everyday civilian life seems like a fiction that has to be acted out in order to be experienced. Instead, military actions or even their cinematic representation become more „normal“ than everyday scenes.
Roman Khimei
Collaborating at the edge of visual art and cinema since 2013, Kyiv-based artists and filmmakers, Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk graduated as cinematographers from the Institute of Screen Arts in Kyiv, Ukraine. Focusing on the role of the extra, their works engage with imperialist mythologies. They were awarded the main award of the PinchukArtCentre Prize (2020) and VISIO Young Talent Acquisition Prize (2021). Their short film Explosion Near the Museum won the National Competition at the 15th Wiz-Art LIFF. The duo also participated in the Future Generation Art Prize 2021, in group exhibitions at Baltic Triennial 14, Gothenburg Biennial 2023, Kyiv Biennial, Haus der Kunst, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Albertinum and others. Their video works are in collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Fondazione In Between Art Film Rome, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein and Frac Bretagne.
Yarema Malashchuk
Collaborating at the edge of visual art and cinema since 2013, Kyiv-based artists and filmmakers, Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk graduated as cinematographers from the Institute of Screen Arts in Kyiv, Ukraine. Focusing on the role of the extra, their works engage with imperialist mythologies. They were awarded the main award of the PinchukArtCentre Prize (2020) and VISIO Young Talent Acquisition Prize (2021). Their short film Explosion Near the Museum won the National Competition at the 15th Wiz-Art LIFF. The duo also participated in the Future Generation Art Prize 2021, in group exhibitions at Baltic Triennial 14, Gothenburg Biennial 2023, Kyiv Biennial, Haus der Kunst, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Albertinum and others. Their video works are in collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Fondazione In Between Art Film Rome, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein and Frac Bretagne.
Screenings
Thu, 23 Oct 2025 · 18:00 · Followed by Q&A
Prenzlauer Allee 80, 10405 Berlin