The Ukrainian Film Festival Berlin 2025, under the theme "The Time We Have Left," will take place from October 22 to 26, marking its sixth anniversary.
The festival celebrates the latest Ukrainian auteur cinema and focuses on liberation from external control and internal erasure.
Wie durch ein Wunder überlebt die Klavierstudentin Laura bei einem Ausflug ins Berliner Umland einen schweren Autounfall. Körperlich unversehrt, aber innerlich aus der Bahn geworfen, kommt sie im Haus von Betty unter, die den Unfall beobachtet hat. Vom ersten Moment an verbindet die beiden Frauen eine tiefe Zuneigung. Laura genießt die mütterliche Fürsorge Bettys, die Arbeit im Garten, die Besuche in der Werkstatt von Bettys Ehemann Richard und ihrem Sohn Max, die gemeinsamen Essen. Es beginnt eine fast unbeschwerte, glückliche Zeit des Zusammenseins, ein Spätsommertraum, dem sich Laura und die Familie nur zu gerne überlassen. Aber da ist etwas, das nicht stimmt, ein tiefer, dunkler Schmerz, der alle vier verbindet und doch unausgesprochen bleibt. Laura spürt, dass sie aus diesem Traum erwachen müssen, um wieder leben und lieben zu können.
Im Jahr 1970 gelingt dem arbeitslosen Tischler James Blaine Mooney (Josh O'Connor) gemeinsam mit zwei Komplizen ein dreister Einbruch in ein Museum: Bei Tageslicht entwenden sie vier Gemälde. Doch der spektakuläre Kunstraub ist erst der Anfang. Die vermeintliche Beute wird zur Belastung, und Mooney sieht sich gezwungen, ein Leben auf der Flucht zu führen. Eingebettet in eine Ära des gesellschaftlichen Wandels – geprägt vom Vietnamkrieg und der wachsenden Frauenbewegung – entfaltet sich die Geschichte eines Mannes, der zwischen Kunst, Kriminalität und den Umbrüchen seiner Zeit seinen Platz sucht.
Kurzfilmprogramm (more info soon)
USA, Ukraine, Japan (2025) 11 minutes
Director: Nata Metlukh
A data engineer rushes through life, believing multitasking saves time—but it only creates chaos. Despite his strict control over time, nothing gets done: his home is a mess, work overflows, and breakfast is always burnt. He discovers joy in life only when time breaks apart.
Ukraine (2025) 14 minutes
Director: Alina Panasenko
While roaming through the streets of wartime Kyiv, Anna discreetly films men passing by. Her search for a one-night stand ends in an unexpected meeting with a soldier. Distant observation leads her into the unsettling collision with reality.
Ukraine (2025) 29 minutes
Director: Megumi Lim
In the still hours of Kharkiv's curfewed nights, a quiet resilience hums through its empty streets. Night Shift is a short film about people who work under the cover of darkness, navigating both routine and risk as Russia often attacks when residents try to sleep. The film explores how nighttime in Ukraine's second largest city has transformed because of war, its nightly hope that dawn will arrive quietly, and the human need to carry on.
Ukraine, Georgia (2024) 7 minutes
Director: Daria Zhuravel
This is an autobiographical story by Daria Zhuravel, dedicated to the childhood and those who are no longer with us, but whose presence accompanies us wherever we go.
Ukraine (2025) 17 minutes
Directors: Roman Khimei, Yarema Malashchuk
From the very beginning of the Russian attack on Ukraine, we began to ask ourselves “What is normality today?”. We decided to contact Pavlo Aldoshyn, an actor, who at the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, joined the Ukrainian army. Pavlo's last role before the full-scale war was the lead in the action movie “Sniper: The White Raven”. We invited Pavlo to come to Kyiv from the frontline as a soldier and portray a civilian. The change in perception of reality that Pavlo is confronted with becomes literal: for Pavlo, everyday civilian life seems like a fiction that has to be acted out in order to be experienced. Instead, military actions or even their cinematic representation become more „normal“ than everyday scenes.
A personal video-letter from the frontline, showing war as both a collective reality and an individual experience—marked by danger, exhaustion, and fleeting tenderness.
Shot as a personal video-letter to her son in France, the filmmaker documents her time as a volunteer on the frontline. Between danger, exhaustion, and fleeting tenderness, Kovalenko crafts an intimate portrait of war as both a collective and deeply personal experience. It’s a raw diary where the mother’s voice softens the soldier’s eye.
Ukraine (2025) 2 minutes
Director: Margaryta Winkler
A train hums along the tracks, a mind drifts off.
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Ukraine (2024) 22 minutes
Director: Oleh Kibalnyk
In childhood parents predict a great future for us. But could anyone have imagined I would become a clapper?
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Ukraine (2025) 4 minutes
Director: Iryna Lytvynova
A cheerful artist wakes up to the reality of war. She tries to escape to a quiet haven, only to be met by her own destructive emotions. This is a story about struggle — and strength.
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Ukraine (2024) 7 minutes
Director: Severian Lazariev
A reclusive young man encountered mysticism in his entrance - suddenly the phone, which has not worked for many years, rang. Now the whole house lives in fear. Will the young man be able to find out who is calling?
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Ukraine (2025) 30 minutes
Director: Vadim Mochalov
Working on his screenplay about two guys admitting their feelings for each other, a film directing major from Kyiv Lyonya asks his classmate Andriy, with whom he’s secretly in love, to help with the script editing.
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Ukraine (2024) 1 minute
Director: Heorhii Blinov
After staying in the basement of a high-rise building until the last explosion, the friends go home to continue their usual day. This movie is about what has already been experienced and continues to be lived every day.
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Ukraine (2024) 4 minutes
Directors: Ivan Tsupka, Lera Fokina, Elena Sydorenko
Ukrainian woman tries to preserve a sense of normalcy while living under constant threat of Russian missile strikes. A series of short stories about everyday resilience amidst war.
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Ukraine (2024) 15 minutes
Director: Eduard Nechmohlod
Behind the facade of a perfect marriage, a devoted wife struggles to keep afloat with her unusual husband.
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Ukraine (2025) 5 minutes
Director: Maryna Yanul
A peculiar creature’s quiet routine is disrupted by an unexpected visitor, pulling her toward a new and uncertain world.
Sometimes a pregnancy begins with two beating hearts. But not both always make it to birth.
This phenomenon, known as the vanishing twin syndrome, often remains invisible: the mother may not notice it, medicine barely records it, yet the surviving twin carries it within for a lifetime.
The documentary film Per Due, written by Elisabetta Giuseppina Zecca and directed by Stefano Filippi, tells this silent experience with delicacy and depth. It is a journey through images, testimonies, and reflections that touches on themes of prenatal memory, invisible bonds, unspoken grief, and the possibility of transforming all this into awareness and reconciliation.
Inspired by the book The Vanishing Twin Syndrome by Alfred and Bettina Austermann, therapists who have worked on this subject for many years, the film opens a space of listening and recognition that concerns far more people than one might think.
Because behind a feeling of emptiness, an unexplained nostalgia, or difficulties in relationships, there may be the trace of a sibling who was never born.
"Per Due" is not only a film to watch: it is an experience to live together.
