The 20th International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Docudays UA turned out to be really special. We have been (co)creating it together with you for two decades, and this time was especially memorable! We are grateful to our team, our loyal audience, our partners, and our donors. And, most importantly, to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who are holding the sky, giving us a chance to come together.

The blank page of the image of the future was gradually filled with graphic signs, messages, and drawings, becoming colorful. Your involvement in the creative process turned out to be a real participatory artistic practice. We were touched by the incessant stream of your feedback, so we're quoting several comments.

Rodion Shub:

Dear Docudays, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that you are incredible as always, and this year's design is mega-duper-duper-shmuper cool! The super stylish future is already here!.

According to rough estimates, about 600 people were involved in the festival, including our 47 guests, 59 participants, 73 partners, the industry, 18 regional coordinators of the Travelling Docudays UA Festival, 102 volunteers and a team of 120 people. The jury members – Eva Križková from Slovakia, Kuitim Çashku from Albania, and Marko Grba Singh from Serbia, – came to Ukraine for the first time in their lives, having endured a difficult journey.

Our accreditation service has been tirelessly issuing badges and packing souvenir bags with gifts from our partners Lush and Delamark. Meanwhile, we lost count of the number of times our communications team received requests from potential buyers of this year's festival merchandise (unfortunately, it’s not available yet).

Since May, we have put about 225 Festival Passes into your safe hands. We gave more than 250 tickets for free to pensioners and the military. Online sales reached 3,500, and about 3,800 film screenings were booked with accreditations.

During the festival, we’ve collaborated with 20 Ukrainian media outlets. More than 100 journalists were accredited to prepare materials, reviews, texts and articles.

We printed 13750 forms for audience votes. Thanks to the Ukrainian Air Defense Forces, we waited out three air raids safely.

In the course of the festival and the Audience Days, our online community grew by 1326 followers on social media.

Verona:

This year's programme is great! The long-awaited Docudays exceeded all expectations, given the martial law.

The events of the human rights programme Rights Now!, The Ukraine War Archive, Coffee with Human Rights Defenders etc – 15 events in total were attended by 463 people. The viewing room of the Ukraine War Archive was attended by 120 guests. 40 people attended the premiere of the documentary Witnesses, based on the media materials from the War Archive.

Two offline events of the DOCU/SYNTHESIS Interdisciplinary Art Programme were attended by 60 participants. About 45 people immersed themselves into the audio installation, and nearly all the festival visitors watched Yevhen Arlov's installation Outside the Window, which was created on the basis of video testimonies from the War Archive. We suggest you count yourselves the number of selfies you took against the background of black and white windows.

The three offline events of the DOCU/CLASS workshop were attended by 11 speakers, 3 moderators, 105 viewers and 2 dogs. However, we know for sure that the number of four-legged audience members this year calls for the introduction of a separate badge.

The Industry Accreditation was granted to 150 people. The DOCU/PRO programme comprised 4 open admission events for everyone (three of them offline and one online) and 6 closed events (five online and one offline) for the holders of the Industry and Festival accreditations. In total, about 386 people attended the DOCU/PRO events, both online and offline.

khrystynamorozovakyiv:

For me, Docudays UA has always been a way to fall out of normal life and live a week of this special, rich, condensed experience, collected in documentaries. Nowadays, as we have all fallen out of normal life, Docudays becomes a way to regain our normalcy. I always feel sad when the festival films are still being screened at Zhovten, but the installations have already been dismantled, the commercials have changed, and the tickets are checked by completely different people. The festival itself is no longer here. And today, it happened again. Hopefully, until next year. Thank you, @docudays_ua, for being there. In these times, it's easier to live knowing that you are there and that the festival continues. Freedom to Max Butkevych and to all Ukrainian political prisoners.

During the festival, our photo service, including Stas Kartashov, Serhiy Khandusenko, Valentyn Kuzan, Svitlana Lazko, and Oleksandr Tsybin, took 7020 photos, capturing all the encounters, smiles, and hugs.

We would like to remind you that we presented 53 films from 27 countries, from Greenland to South Africa. The program included 26 Ukrainian films: 12 feature and 14 short films. Among them are 4 world premieres and 21 national premieres of Ukrainian films. There were also art installations and themed discussions. The screenings and events took place from June 2 to June 8 at Zhovten and KINO42 cinemas, as well as in the DOCUSPACE online cinema. The festival ended with three audience days on June 9-11, featuring the festival hits and the films that won the competition programmes.
Finally, we awarded 8 prizes and received one Special Mention for our team from the International Jury.

At the same time, we streamed 14 events on the festival's Facebook page, including the Opening and Closing ceremonies, and recorded 25 events from Rights Now!, The Ukraine War Archive, DOCU/PRO, DOCU/CLASS and DOCU/SYNTHESIS).

Follow our updates, since the recordings will gradually appear on the DOCUSPACE online platform. You can watch and listen to some of them right now!

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The 20th Anniversary Docudays UA is supported by the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, the Embassy of Switzerland in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, the US Embassy in Ukraine, the Embassy of Ireland in Ukraine, the Embassy of Denmark in Ukraine, the Embassy of Brazil in Ukraine, the Polish Institute in Kyiv, and the Czech Center in Kyiv. The opinions, conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of the governments or charitable organizations of these countries. The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of its author(s).