New images from Ukraine

Festival Reviews

Navalny

by Stephen Dalton | Mar 2, 2023 | Featured, Festivals, Hot Docs, New images from Ukraine, Sundance

Director Daniel Roher’s gripping documentary about the poison plot against Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny gains extra urgency in the light of Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Zero Position

by Deborah Young | May 6, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, Hot Docs, New images from Ukraine

Toronto photographer Louie Palu’s unstructured yet immersive trip into the Donbas war zones in 2016 makes a skin-crawling intro to the current invasion of Ukraine.

Rhino

by Deborah Young | Mar 7, 2022 | Festivals, New images from Ukraine, Spotlight

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED SEPT. 13, 2021 Ukrainian activist Oleh Sentsov directs a hard-boiled gangster tale set in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, whose over-the-top violence is starkly undermotivated.

Trenches

by Boyd van Hoeij | Mar 7, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, New images from Ukraine

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED SEPT. 3, 2021 An intimate visit to the Donbas trenches, where men (and one oddly portrayed woman) become the latest soldiers in history to experience trench warfare.

Olga

by Boyd van Hoeij | Mar 1, 2022 | Cannes, Festivals, New images from Ukraine, Spotlight

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED ON OCT. 25, 2021 Elie Grappe’s sober drama about a teenaged Ukrainian gymnast sent abroad for her safety mixes sports and politics with coming-of-age elements, and represented Switzerland in the Oscar race.

Bad Roads

by Boyd van Hoeij | Feb 26, 2022 | Featured, Festivals, New images from Ukraine

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED OCT. 21, 2021 Writer-director Natalya Vorozhbit’s insightful documentary play-turned-film was Ukraine’s Oscar submission.

A House Made of Splinters

by Jordan Mintzer | Jan 24, 2022 | CANNES MARCHE' DU FILM, Festivals, New images from Ukraine, Sundance, Thessaloniki Documentary

A powerful documentary chronicle of children left abandoned by the conflict in Ukraine won the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.

Klondike

by Jay Weissberg | Jan 21, 2022 | Berlin, Festivals, International Oscars 2024, New images from Ukraine, Sundance

Notwithstanding truly impressive visuals by D.P. Sviatoslav Bulakovskyi, “Klondike” underwhelms with its unilluminating look at the Donbas region conflict in Ukraine, seen through a reductionist gendered lens where women nurture and men achieve nothing but destruction.

Reflection

by Deborah Young | Sep 6, 2021 | Festivals, New images from Ukraine, Spotlight

ORIGINALLY REVIEWED SEPT. 7, 2021 Ukrainian filmmaker Valentyn Vasyanovych follows up his Venice Horizons-winning ‘Atlantis’ with ‘Reflection’ (‘Vidblysk’), a perturbing true horror tale of his country’s war with Russia.