It is time we met our festival jury that will be selecting the winners among the films in competition.
This year, in addition to the standard festival programs DOCU/LIFE, DOCU/RIGHT and DOCU/SHORT, there will be one more competition DOCU/UKRAINE. It is a special space where Ukrainian filmmakers will be able to watch each others’ projects, as well as to talk to their audiences and get feedback from international experts.
The best among the participants in the creative documentary filmmaking competition DOCU/LIFE will be selected by international journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk, the director Viesturs Kairish, who has made an opera about Chornobyl, and Pamela Cohn, an American connoisseur of the best documentaries.
As an independent reporter, Nataliya Gumenyuk has covered the main political and social events in more than 50 countries. Now she is at the head of the crowdfunded Internet television channel Hromadske.TV and continues reporting on the events on Maidan, in Crimea and Donbas.
Pamela Cohn has been working as a media producer and consulting documentary projects for more than twenty years. At Docudays, as a programmer of the TRUE/FALSE festival, she is going to present a collection of the most interesting American films, which are relevant to the current situation in Ukraine.
The Latvian opera director Viesturs Kairish is world famous for opera productions in Cologne, Berlin and Darmstadt, but in Kyiv he is going to screen his documentary “The Invisible City”, an extraordinary opera about people, who fled the modern civilization to live in Chornobyl.
The competition DOCU/RIGHT traditionally includes the films which highlight the struggle for fundamental rights and freedoms. The best known Ukrainian playwright Natalia Vorozhbyt, the freedom of speech expert Tetiana Pechonchyk and sociologist Anne le Huérou will select the best winner in this category.
Natalia Vorozhbyt has been experimenting with contemporary drama ideas since the mid 1990-s. Her plays have been staged in the UK, Poland, Latvia, the USA, Russia and Germany. She is one of the cofounders of the festival “Contemporary Drama Week” and the Kyiv-based project “Refugee’s Theatre.”
Two year ago, together with her colleagues, Tetiana Pechonchyk launched “Crimea Field Mission.” She researches freedom of speech in the Ukrainian media and leads the Human Rights Information Centre.
Sociologist Anne le Huérou is a lecturer at the Paris West University Nanterre-La Défense. She has been doing research in post-Soviet Russia and other post-Soviet countries since the 1990s focusing on civil society, war and violence, labor migrations, and law enforcement agencies.
The winners in the nomination DOCU/SHORT will be selected by the Finnish filmmaker Eero Tammi, the Dutch project manager Melanie de Vogt and one of the cofounders of the Lviv-based festival Olha Reiter.
Eero Tammi has published four books on cinema and has been a FIPRESCI jury member in several festivals. Apart from being a passionate film-lover, he also creates experimental documentaries, art installations and videoclips.
Melanie de Vogt has been working in the IDFA Bertha Fund, one of the best-known documentary film festival in Europe. The main goal of the fund is to support documentary films from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
The curator and producer Olha Reiter is a cofounder of Lviv Film Commission and the art formation Wiz-Art, one of the most noticeable and up-and-coming Ukrainian organizations working in the audiovisual area. Besides, now she is promoting Wiz-Art Film School, an informal education platform in the field of cinema.
This year the jury of DOCU/SHORT will also define the winners among the films competing in the section DOCU/UKRAINE.
Students will select their own winners among the films in competition. The youngest Docudays jury consists of five members and is formed according to the recommendations of youth organizations. This year the jury includes Philip Sotnychenko, Liza Havrylenko, Mariya Sulyalina, Roman Guba and Yehor Burkov.
The young Ukrainian director Philip Sotnychenko is also a cofounder of the NGO “SUK” (“Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema”) and a curator of the GOGOLFEST national film competition. Mariya Sulyalina is a coordinator of youth projects in Almenda Civil Education Centre and a curator of a social problem films club.
Liza Havrylenko is studying sociology at NaUKMA and planning to continue her education as a documentary film director. Her diploma paper and first film were devoted to the problems of the displaced persons after the Chornobyl disaster. Roman Guba is studying at UCU journalism school. He is interested in social and political reporting.
