2022 has been a year of resistance and a year of mutual support. It has also been a year when we have felt like never before that we are strong and not alone. Despite bombings and blackouts, this year we have managed to do so much. Here are some of our organisation’s main achievements in 2022: 
Ukraine War Archive
In March, we began to form a database of video and audio recordings about the war in Ukraine. Soon after that, we launched a Telegram bot for collecting materials and the Ukraine War Archive website. In nine months, we have collected and uploaded to the Archive over 885 hours of video and audio recordings from open-access Telegram channels and sorted over 320 hours of materials. The project team has also recorded 120 hours of interviews with witnesses of the war, particularly residents of Donetsk, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava, and Vinnytsia Regions. The Ukraine War Archive, founded by NGO Docudays and the UK organisation Infoscope, gained support of powerful partners, including the VGORU Media Platform, Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, Centre for Civil Liberties, Ukrainian Witness organisation, UKRAЇNER, hromadske, Suspilne, Kinodopomoha Association and others. We continue working on organising the war recordings. You can submit your materials to the Archive or tell us about your own experience of living during the war via the initiative’s website.
Photo from the award ceremony of the annual benefit event by FilmAid
Cultural diplomacy
Docudays UA has been actively working to amplify the Ukrainian voice in the world. We have organised screenings of Ukrainian documentaries abroad, participated in international industry conferences and human rights discussions, and sent delegations of Ukrainian filmmakers and critics to the leading film festivals. We represented Ukraine at 29 international platforms, including the Cannes Film Festival, IDFA, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Krakow Film Festival, Triennale Milano and others.
Representatives of the Docudays UA team actively spoke abroad about a powerful wave of new Ukrainian cinema and emphasised the need to debunk Russia’s imperial narratives. Notably, thanks to these discussions the Slovakian film festival One World Slovakia decided not to show Russian films.
This year, the NGO Docudays team received an award from the American non-governmental initiative Documentary Excellence for human rights advocacy through cinema. We are proud of our team’s daily work!
The Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to Ukraine Tobias Tyberg at the opening ceremony of the special edition of the 19th Docudays UA, Stas Kartashov
Special edition of the 19th Docudays UA titled the State of Emergency
In November, we held the special edition of the 19th Docudays UA titled the State of Emergency. In the three days of the film weekend, we screened as many as 16 wonderful documentaries, listened to two discussions and two streams of the War Archive project. We are grateful to our partners, audience, volunteers, guests, even speakers and discussion participants! We thank you for the full house at the opening and at the long-awaited film premieres, for thoughtful questions at discussions, for the warm atmosphere and the feeling of co-presence. The festival screenings and events were attended 3,260 times.
The screening of the VR film Invasions 1.2.3, DOCU/SYNTHESIS, The special edition of the 19th Docudays UA, Stas Kartashov
DOCU/SYNTHESIS
We have continued to work on DOCU/SYNTHESIS, the interdisciplinary programme we created in 2021. This branch of our work is about experimenting with innovative formats and exploring the connections between documentary cinema and other art forms. During the State of Emergency special edition, we screened the VR film Invasions 1.2.3 by the Ukrainian artist Alevtina Kakhidze and the Ukrainian filmmaker Piotr Armianovski, made after the Kyiv Region was liberated from Russian occupiers. We also organised the panel discussion Invasion: From a Scientific Term to an Art Metaphor with Alevtina Kakhidze, Piotr Armianovski and Oleksiy Kovalenko, a botanist researcher, co-author of the film and performer in the project.
The special edition of the 19th Docudays UA, Stas Kartashov
DOCUSPACE
Some films from the State of Emergency special edition as well as from the 19th Travelling Docudays UA programme were uploaded to the docuspace.org online cinema. Despite frequent blackouts, we managed to sell 121 tickets. In 2022, our audience watched 4,183 minutes of documentary films on DOCUSPACE.
The special edition of the 19th Docudays UA, Stas Kartashov
19 Travelling Docudays UA
This year’s 19 Travelling Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival took place all over Ukraine. 2,885 people from all around the country have already participated in the Festival’s online and offline events! For the first time, audiences from abroad have also joined it, particularly from Germany, Israel, Norway, and Poland. In total, we have organised 251 screenings and 82 events, offline and online, for residents of 81 cities and towns.
We have also launched the special project Why Ukrainians Are Winning. It features 10 stories about the unbreakability, struggle and victories of Travelling Docudays UA’s regional coordinators, published weekly on the websites of the Travelling Festival and Suspilne.
Along with films, this year the Travelling Festival brought the Unbreakable Kherson exhibition by Oleksandr Korniakov, a photo reporter for the Vgoru Media Platform, to different places in the country. The exhibition documents rallies and protests as well as the everyday life of Khersonians under occupation. These photos have already been featured on the pages of the most famous global media: Reuters, The Times, The Guardian, BBC, Aljazeera and many others.
The special edition of the 19th Docudays UA, Stas Kartashov
DOCU/CLUB Network
The work of the DOCU/CLUB Network in Ukrainian regions has also continued. In a year, we have conducted 803 online and offline events on the basis of DOCU/CLUBs in the regions. 38 new film clubs opened in 2022 and 89 resumed their work during the war.
The DOCU/CLUB Network film club moderators who moved abroad have resumed the operation of their film clubs abroad for refugees from Ukraine. Film clubs for Ukrainians are functioning in Norway, Germany, Poland, Finland, and Italy.
The special edition of the 19th Docudays UA, Stas Kartashov
Docudays UA’s human rights work
With support from partner festivals, particularly Festival One World Romania, International Film and Human Rights Festival of Valencia, Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival and others, we organised six human rights events abroad. We spoke about working with the consequences of the war, discussed environmental threats caused by military activities, and talked about the ineffectiveness of international organisations in ensuring global peace.
We held five online RIGHTS NOW! human rights events as a part of the 19th Travelling Docudays UA. Together with our expert guests, we discussed the impact of the war on the environment and the medical system, and talked about why it is important to preserve evidence and testimonies of the events we are experiencing now. Video recordings of the human rights events have reached 4,472 users.
NGO Docudays’ Nationwide Campaign “Together for Safe Childbirth!” focuses on challenges related to pregnancy and labour during the war. We engaged two powerful ambassadors: ObGyn Roman Vorona and the singer ALYOSHA. 6 materials about the difficulties faced this year by doctors and people giving birth have been published as a part of the campaign. The total audience of the publications on the Campaign’s Facebook page has reached over 116,000 views!
The special edition of the 19th Docudays UA, Stas Kartashov
DOCU/HELP
In early March, we created the support initiative DOCU/HELP. Thanks to the joint effort of the Docudays UA team, friends and partners of the festival, we were able to support Ukrainian filmmakers documenting the events of the war with the most necessary technical and protective equipment, cover their fuel costs, etc. You can read about our spending in support of the film industry in more detail in our reports: for March, for April-May, for June-July.
In addition, this summer we launched FILMBOOST, a stipend programme for filmmakers, in partnership with Deutsche Filmakademie e.V. as a part of DOCU/HELP. It became possible with the support from the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media as well as from Goethe-Institut. An independent international jury processed over 400 applications with projects in various genres and formats. Everyone—60 finalists in total—received 5,000 euros each. In addition, our Irish partners, Irish Filmmakers Supporting Filmmakers with support from Element Pictures and the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland, provided an additional prize of 2,000 euros for a beginner filmmaker for the creation of a short documentary or feature film. We are incredibly grateful to all our friends, colleagues and partners for their support.
Presentation of the projects at Work in Progress, Sheffield DocFest-2022, Roman Bondarchuk
Civil Pitch 2.0
This year, Civil Pitch 2.0 received a record number of applications from filmmakers and activists: 150 project ideas. Our participants reformatted the ideas and received 250,000 hryvnias for film production. Later Civil Pitch 2.0 was supported by Goethe-Institut by giving additional funding of 2,500 euros to each of the four winning teams. At the moment, the projects are at the stage of production with support from international mentors. The four films that bring the victory closer will be premiered at the next Docudays UA festival.
A special thank you to the national and private funds, NGOs and private companies who supported us and our projects in 2022:
Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, USAID/ENGAGE, Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine and House of Europe, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), ISAR Ednannia, Stabilisation Fund for Culture and Education 2022 of the German Federal Foreign Office and Goethe-Institut, Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, Fondation de France, Prague Civil Society Center, European Cultural Foundation, Razom for Ukraine, People in Need, Oschadbank and Mastercard, International Media Support, Ukrainian-Danish Youth House, Embassy of Switzerland in Ukraine, Deutsche Filmakademie e.V., Polish Institute in Kyiv.
