Description
UFFB Shorts: program II
Films in this programme
Can you hear me?
Anastazja Naumenko · Poland · 2025 · 15'
Nastia, who has lived abroad for years, starts to teach her mom how to use Internet services. Different perceptions of technology become the starting point for exposing intergenerational conflicts and long-forgotten family threads. Can an intimacy regained via zoom be a turning point for the future relationship between two adults?
Anastazja Naumenko
Anastazja Naumenko is a visual artist and director, whose main investigation focuses on intertwinement and co-relations between real and fictional worlds, hence most of their works are a mix of documentary and fiction. They are currently studying at die Angewandte in Vienna.
Life begins
Oleksiy Taranenko · Ukraine · 2025 · 27'
The Protagonist is a war veteran who struggles to readjust to civilian life after participating in fierce battles. He finds it difficult to find his place, even at home. After a fight in a pub, he is imprisoned in a military facility and then sent back home, where memories, physical and emotional trauma, and the sounds of war haunt him.
Oleksiy Taranenko
Oleksiy Taranenko is a Ukrainian film director and screenwriter born in 1976 in Dnipro, Ukraine. He has been working as a director of commercials and films since 2003. He is the author of several scripts,commercials and features. In 2013, his documentary “Stylization of aftertaste” won a special mention at The Film Skillet Documentary Film Contest (USA). “I Work at the Cemetery” (2022) his feature debut as a director. This film has been selected and received several awards at national and international film festivals, including Warsaw FF, Molodist IFF, British Independent Film Festival.
Where is my body armor?
Daria Penkova · Ukraine · 2025 · 17'
Dasha, a young cameraman, is going home from Germany to Druzhkivka, in the Donetsk region. She had not been home for two years since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Immediately upon exiting the train, she meets her old friend Andrii, about whom she once filmed a documentary and with whom she has mutual sympathy. Now he is a military man.
Daria Penkova
Daria Penkova is a Ukrainian director and cinematographer from Druzhkivka, Donetsk region. A graduate of Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, she also studied at HFBK Hamburg, where she worked with film stock and co-organized Ukrainian student film screenings. Now based in Kyiv, she works at a production company, directing commercial projects that merge visual precision with a strong creative vision. Her short film «Where’s My Body Armor?» won the Main Prize of the Andriy Matrosov Award at Docudays UA 2025.
Critical Condition
Mila Zhluktenko · Germany · 2025 · 24'
Inspired by the events around the life of Lev Rebet, Ukrainian author and editor-in-chief of the Munich-based exile newspaper „Ukrainian Independist“, “Critical Condition” portrays the fates of the Ukrainian diaspora in the past and present.
Mila Zhluktenko
Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Mila Zhluktenko studied documentary filmmaking at HFF Munich. Her films have been screened at a number of international festivals including the Berlinale, IDFA, the San Sebastian Film Festival, MoMA’s Doc Fortnight and at Visions du Réel. Her current works co- directed with Daniel Asadi Faezi include „Aralkum“ (Juryprize Visions du Réel) and „Waking up in Silence“ (Jury Prize Berlinale Generation KPlus).
Screenings
Fri, 24 Oct 2025 · 20:30 · Followed by Q&A
Prenzlauer Allee 80, 10405 Berlin
Sat, 25 Oct 2025 · 19:00 · Followed by Q&A
Hasenheide 54/5th, 10967 Berlin