Yulia Kovalenko, the Programme Director of Docudays UA, speaks about how communication with the international film community has been shaped since last year. This new entry in our Cultural Diplomacy section is about the main accents of our messages, the strategies and challenges of cultural diplomacy.

Starting the dialogue

In 2022, we began communication with the GoEast festival. It was April, the full-scale war had just started. At the time, the festival had already developed a programme which included russian films and did not have sufficient representation of Ukrainian films. So our dialogue with the GoEast team began with active criticism, and Ukrainian filmmakers wanted to withdraw their films.

Tactically it could have been the right decision, but strategically it wasn’t. In no way could it promote the development of Ukrainian cinema during the full-scale war. So we communicated a lot with the festival director Helen Gerritsen to develop a joint strategy. She was absolutely open to dialogue. In the end the result was an event, more like a presentation of why Ukrainians were calling to stop any cooperation with Russia and russian filmmakers. It was the beginning of a discussion which was immediately labelled as “cancelling”. The russian lobby is enormous and influential, so it was a shock for the entire western cultural community. The world was used to russian culture and cinema being an integral part of any cultural event.

Continuing the active pressure on our international partners in public communication, as it happened this year with DOK Leipzig when the festival was massively criticised on social media because there was a russian film in its programme—the option still remains. However, it’s still a kind of “samurai’s path”. Yes, it can produce certain results, but mainly it forms an image of Ukrainians as aggressive people incapable of maintaining a calm civilised dialogue. Of course, this is a simplification and dramatisation, but we should be more cautious with this strategy.

This year’s events: professional focus and opportunities

In mid-October, I attended the Inconvenient Films festival in Vilnius, where beginner filmmakers compete at the initial stage of their careers. It’s a very nice competition with a lot of films that have political messages. One of the winners (in the Special Mention category) was about the nature of violence and war and about how they need to be conceptualised. It was a film by Zayne Akyol, Rojek, which is set in Kurdistan liberated from occupation by ISIS. Its most significant message is that no war can be simplified. The filmmaker interviews people who used to be jihadists and now ended up in prison and asks them, “Why did you join the jihad?” These are very simple and direct questions which resonate with what is happening in our country right now.

Today I’m at the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, participating in their traditional programme Festival identity. I’m also involved in the industry section: New Visions Forum and Matchmaking Acceleration. The former is a powerful platform for dialogue with other festivals. Here, there’s an opportunity to deepen our communication about why Ukrainian cinema needs active support and presence at other international platforms. I hope that I’ll be able to sketch out our future cooperation.

Ji.hlava is its own story entirely, because for the second year in a row they focus in their industry section on the ethical aspect of festivals, discussing not only production processes but also incredibly important things in terms of programming. Last year the main emphasis was on Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine and its impact on festival programming. It is a significant direction which can also be developed outside of Ji.hlava.

The other section, New Visions Forum and Matchmaking Acceleration, is an industry story which is more focused on personal communications. Here, you can meet producers and other film professionals, which gives you an opportunity to share your plans and talk about Ukrainian cinema and our festival.

Key messages for the international community

Decolonisation practices in programming is what I currently focus on in communications with international festivals. My emphasis is on the need to deconstruct the imperialism of russian culture, including cinema. For this purpose, I suggest that my colleagues treat the films they select with the most thorough criticism possible.

The main message which is being shaped today, not just in my communication but generally in the communications of Ukrainian culture managers, is that the problem is not only putin. The western bubble has this illusion that he will leave and everything will return to its place: russian culture will once again be at the forefront, ukrainian culture will be happy. Everyone will live “together in harmony”, just like it was before according to them.

I see my (our?) task in explaining that it is not just about putin, because russian culture is imperialist and chauvinistic through and through. So what is needed is deconstruction of this imperialism and decolonisation of Eastern European cinema in general and Ukrainian cinema in particular. Today, it is also about choosing the strategy: in what way it is best to communicate all this as effectively as possible.

Internal and external communication

Clearly, trips are just the tip of all this cultural diplomacy. The majority of the work is in internal private communications.

I probably won’t say anything new here: the most effective communication is internal communication which then develops into joint events and the presence of Ukrainian films at festivals. A warm personal connection actually has an effect. When you’re in less formal circumstances, in a personal conversation, and you speak about things that can touch someone and communicate the most important things.

In external, public communication we need to be more thorough in thinking through the concepts of events and integration of Ukrainian cinema into other festivals’ programmes. Because we can’t just reiterate last year’s statements and ignore the fact that from the purely programming point of view it is not interesting. We need to find certain formats and formulations to place it in a broader context. To attract people to the event and to avoid it looking like a Ukrainian ghetto. It is important to constantly expand the audience of our messages.

We already have plans for shared activities with one of the European festivals: a selection of Ukrainian films and, most likely, a panel discussion. Then we hope to develop cooperation with IDFA. We have our work cut out for us until the end of the year and in the future in general.