This year, due to the quarantine, we have decided to hold the 17th Docudays UA online. On 24 April through 3 May, we will present over 45 live streams of RIGHTS NOW! human rights events and DOCU/CLASS Documentary Workshop events. Every evening throughout the festival, the new episode of The Village by Claire Simon will be presented. In addition, over 50 films will be available free of charge on our DOCU/SPACE platform until 10 May. This decision is full of challenges and experiments for us: thus, Docudays UA will become the first Ukrainian film festival to be held online. Not only Kyiv residents, but the whole Ukraine will have a chance to visit the festival.
We want to support our audience, so all festival screenings and online broadcasts will be free of charge. If you want to, you can pay any amount you wish for watching a film.
The Docudays UA team thanks all its donors and partners, directors of the festival films for their solidarity and contributions to implementing this ambitious decision. Thus, during the quarantine, we offer you to have a new, absolutely untrivial experience of attending the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival online. Let’s stay home to watch and discuss documentary films together.
Viktoriia Leshchenko, Docudays UA Programme Director:
“The decision to hold the online festival already in late April was not easy for us. Of course, no kind of virtual event can replace a physical one. And we really understand the filmmakers’ feelings about the fact that their films are not shown on cinema screens. We are extremely grateful for all the directors’ and partners’ favorable attitude to this idea in this troubled time. This festival is our act of solidarity with the global cultural community and a way to support our audience during the crisis. It is an instrument of personal reboot and communication with the world under the conditions of global isolation.”
The festival will have three main components:
І. public online broadcasts on the docudays.ua website of human rights discussions in the RIGHTS NOW! programme, DOCU/CLASS lectures, and conversations about life and cinema with the directors of festival films and with film critics;
ІІ. the virtual DOCU/SPACE cinema, where you will be able to watch over 50 festival films from the competition and non-competition programmes, most of which will be available between 24 April and 10 May.
ІІІ. exclusive online events for the owners of DOCU/PRO industry accreditations, including the Ukrainian Doc Preview, a presentation of relevant contemporary documentaries at the stage of production to film industry professionals, implemented in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute; as well as Meet Professionals, a cycle of online meetings with international documentary experts.
In addition, the viewers will be able to register for remote conversations with the “books” from the Living Library. And teenagers from across Ukraine will be offered a chance to participate in the Online Documentary Studio, where under the mentorship of documentary filmmakers, they will create their own documentaries about life under quarantine in the DOCU/CAMP.
The online festival will keep all the competition programmes: DOCU/WORLD, DOCU/UKRAINE and DOCU/SHORT. Traditionally, each programme will be evaluated by a separate jury that will include international and Ukrainian experts, documentary filmmakers, human rights advocates. One of the ten nominated films will receive the RIGHTS NOW! award, given to a creative documentary film which explores the contemporary world and makes a significant contribution to the discussion around human dignity, freedom and equality.
In a week, we will publish a detailed programme and schedule of festival online broadcasts. The information about festival passes and industry accreditations will be sent to their holders’ emails.
