Viktoria Leshchenko, who worked for Docudays UA for 13 years and led the Programming Department for the past four years, will join the team of the Dok Leipzig Film Festival as a competition programme coordinator. We are grateful to Viktoria for her long and productive work, for her dedication to the cause and the long path we have walked together! From 1 May, our team has welcomed Yulia Kovalenko as the Programme Director of the 20th Docudays UA.

In 2019, Yulia Kovalenko joined us as a Docudays UA programmer. Today she continues to curate various programmes, such as the non-competition programme DOCU/ART and the masterclass and workshop section DOCU/CLASS. Yulia used to teach culture and art subjects at universities in Odesa. In 2017, she gained a PhD in Cultural Studies. Starting from 2017, Yulia was also the editor of the festival guide, catalogue and other printed materials of Docudays UA. She has her own blog about cinema, kinotabs. She is a member of the Ukrainian Association of FIlm Critics and the Ukrainian National Association of Journalists; she is also a member of the pre-selectors team of Berlinale Forum.

This year, Darya Levchenko, a film researcher, translator, editor, and cultural projects manager, also joined the Programming Department. Previously, she worked as a selector at PÖFF Shorts in Tallinn, Estonia and Filmfest DC, as well as an assistant programmer at the AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center in Washington, DC, and as a production editor at Docudays UA.

Darya holds an MA in Film Studies (North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA) and a double MA in Foreign Languages from Zaporizhzhia National University, Ukraine and Tallinn University, Estonia. Darya is an alumna of the Fulbright, Edmund S. Muskie and Erasmus academic exchange programs.

We sincerely congratulate our colleagues on their new career stages and wish them significant success!

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The 20th anniversary of Docudays UA is held with support from the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, the Embassy of Switzerland in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, 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 centre Kyiv. The opinions, conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of the governments or organisations of these countries. Responsibility for the content of the publication lies exclusively on the authors and editors of the publication.