Four Ukrainian Short Films: Full Short Programme Wrap-Up
The Full Short program, launched by RIBBON International together with Kinotron Group and Roman Coppola’s Decentralized Pictures, is wrapping up: four winning directors from Ukraine who received funding in spring 2025 have completed production of their films. These films will represent Ukraine to international audiences.
“I’m really inspired by the fact that all four films — across different genres (animation, fiction, and archival cinema) — are documentary in one way or another, because each of them explores history, memory, place, and time,” says Lyuba Knorozok, the Ukrainian producer and author of the programme.
Below is a closer look at each project:
Oasis of Good Things by Anastasiia Falileieva — a sweet sorrow of the inevitable passage of time
Oasis of Good Things is an animated reflection on memory and loss, sparked by a childhood question from the director’s younger brother: “When we die, do we become monuments?”
“Every one of my films is therapeutic, and Oasis is no exception. In this film, I touch the theme of death and loss in their most inevitable and natural form… when you finally stop lying to yourself that it will never happen, and accept that nothing is eternal,” Anastasiia says.
In the realities of war, production became far more difficult for the small team from Kremenchuk: two sound designers the crew had worked with for years joined the military service, and power outages made the traditional frame-by-frame animation process exhausting and slow. Scanning and printing were repeatedly postponed as the team searched for electricity. “Oasis of Good Things shines on screen, but suffers from Russian attacks in reality,” the director notes.
Anastasiia Falileieva is a director and animator from Kremenchuk. Her previous film, I Died in Irpin, was shortlisted for the 98th Academy Awards in the Animated Short Film category, received more than 25 awards at leading international festivals, and won the European animation prize Emile for Best Short Animated Film 2025.
Dirt by Lada Kopytova — the last tangible connection to home
Dirt is a fiction short by Lada Kopytova about an elderly Ukrainian refugee stopped at customs in a London airport because of a jar of soil from her homeland.
Lada emphasizes that Dirt is the largest project of her career. She wanted to avoid “tabloid, war-torn depictions of Ukraine” and instead convey the “bittersweet” warmth she still associates with home — a poetic, metaphorical interpretation of the painful experience of having to leave one’s homeland — pushing back against stereotypical expectations of what a “Ukrainian film” should look like.
The film was shot in Odesa. “It was surreal and at the same time heartbreaking to be inside a Ukrainian airport during war. It brought back memories of peaceful skies, and I’m glad that through filmmaking we could, even for a few days, give the crew a sense of past life and remind ourselves what we are fighting for,” she says.
Lada Kopytova is a Ukrainian screenwriter and director currently based in London, working in both fiction and documentary film. Her most recent short, BLUEPRINT, screened at various festivals and received a Best Emerging Filmmaker award at the Canadian Courts D’Un Soir. Lada was included in 75 Filmmakers To Watch in 2024 list by Women X Film Festival and was a finalist of Sundance’s Cultural Impact Lab 2025.
White Cliffs of Vinnytsia by Karolina Uskakovych — hidden colonial histories of extraction and rethinking landscapes
White Cliffs of Vinnytsia is a documentary project about the ruins of a bankrupt chemical plant that have turned into an unexpected oasis of life in the heart of a Ukrainian city. Once one of the largest fertilizer producers in the Soviet Union, KhimProm has left behind a toxic legacy — a phosphogypsum waste mound known as the White Mountain, which both preserves the memory of the industrial past and has become a refuge for a new urban wildlife ecosystem.
“The film challenges the perception of wastelands — not as unwanted spaces, but as places rich in meaning, layered histories, and far-reaching implications. It is crucial to propose a decolonial rethinking of Ukraine’s urban landscapes, to trace the transformation of this (post-)industrial toxic wasteland, and to present a creative vision for the future of (post-)industrial ecosystems,” says Karolina Uskakovych.
Karolina Uskakovych is a director, designer, and artist whose work explores the intersections of environment, culture, and theory. She completed an MA in Nonlinear Narrative at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and currently works as a research associate at the University of Nottingham. She is a co-founder of the Ukrainian Environmental Humanities Network and a member of the Digital Ecologies research group and.
On the Steep Cliff by Taras Spivak — an archival study of Crimea’s occupation
On the Steep Cliff is a documentary project that draws on the archive of journalist and Sevastopol City Council deputy Volodymyr Illarionov, taking us back to the “quiet years” of Crimea as an autonomous republic within independent Ukraine. Following Illarionov — the “bard of Crimea” — the film shows how everyday seaside life concealed the subtle political shifts that gradually stripped the peninsula of its autonomy.
“The main challenge for me was combining work on an archival film with living in Kyiv in 2025: on one hand, it creates a productive tension between the present and history, reminding me that my interest in how Crimea became an ideological center of military aggression is directly connected to what is happening now. On the other, at least two of the six months of work coincided with periods of massive combined attacks on the city several times a week,” the director says.
Taras Spivak is a director, film editor, and archival researcher. He studied at the Department of Cultural Studies at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and later worked on cataloging the archive of the Kyiv Studio of Popular Science Film. In his directing practice, he works with found footage and objects to engage in dialogue with the traditions of essay cinema, political film, and scientific cinema.
Archive
Meet the four Archive award recipients of the “Full Short” Competition!
After a thorough review of all 241 submitted applications, the international jury is finally ready to announce the winners, albeit with a slight delay. In its final decision the jury considered the originality of artistic vision, the applicants’ mastery of the short form, as well as peer review ratings.
Based on the voting results, a $20,000 grant for the creation of their short films goes to:
- Animated project “Oasis of Good Things”, directed by Anastasiia Falileieva
- Fiction project “Dirt”, directed by Lada Kopytova
- Documentary project “On the Steep Cliff”, directed by Taras Spivak
- Documentary project “The White Cliffs of Vinnytsia”, directed by Karolina Uskakovych
Congratulations to the directors! We can’t wait to see your completed films!
An initiative to support Ukrainian filmmaking.
In collaboration with RIBBON and Decentralized Pictures (DCP) we invite Ukrainian filmmakers to apply to win financial support to produce a short fiction, documentary or animation film. As Ukraine continues its fight against the Russian invasion, Full Short offers an opportunity to amplify the voices of filmmakers who are at the forefront of shaping the nation’s contemporary artistic expression.
Four selected directors will be awarded with $20,000 USD of essential funding, mentorship, and professional development.
Submissions can be made through the DCP platform by this link from December the 3d 2024 till January 31st 2025. The symbolic submission fee of $1.5 USD must be paid.
Eligibility:
- Must be either a resident of Ukraine or a Ukrainian citizen living abroad.
- All films must be produced within Ukraine.
- Age restrictions: 18+
- Fiction, documentary or animation projects.
- Submitters must have produced at least one short film prior to submitting.
Dates
Submission Start: December 3, 2024
Submission End: January 31, 2025
Peer Review End: February 7, 2025
Jury Deliberation and Final Selection of Recipients: February 2025
Final Recipients Announced (target): February 28, 2025
Finished Films: September 30, 2025
Selection procedure
4 Recipients will be selected by a Jury composed of DCP board members, including the platform’s co-founder Roman Coppola, representatives of RIBBON, and representatives of the filmmaking community in Ukraine. It is intended that the Ukrainian representatives of the jury will have the final decision on the recipients of this award. The DCP community vote ranking (how it works – by this link) of the films will be taken into consideration in the final selection of Recipients.
General award Rules
- All submissions must be either in English or have English language translation for all materials.
- Filmmakers can submit their applications with or without a producer or production company attached. If a submission is selected and a producer is not already in place, the organizers will work with recipients to find one or assign one.
- All submissions must include:
- A logline
- A synopsis
- Cover art for the project listing and supporting imagery
- For shortlisted projects – A link or upload of 1-3 examples of the filmmakers previously completed films or projects will be needed.
We encourage submitters to include a treatment with visual references and tone, as well as a pitch video in either voiceover or selfie style that may include:
- Who you are as a filmmaker
- Why this film is important to you and the world
- Your influences as a filmmaker
- A clear explanation of the inception of the idea and its development
- Your approach to telling this story and why you have chosen to approach it in this way
Filmmakers are encouraged to visit the Decentralized Pictures platform to review submission guidelines and learn more about the application process.
The funding will be provided in accordance with industry standards. Importantly, no intellectual property (IP) ownership transfer will be required, allowing filmmakers to retain full ownership and creative control over their work. RIBBON, Decentralized Pictures, and Kinotron Group are committed to ensuring that filmmakers preserve their artistic integrity throughout the production process.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at full-short@decentralized.pictures.
Organized and/or supported by:
RIBBON is a platform supporting historic and contemporary Ukrainian arts and culture in the form of exhibitions, artist commissions, public programs and grants. RIBBON runs through Ukraine by way of its railway system. Marking nearly three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, RIBBON aims to provide support to the endangered legacies of Ukraine’s cultural and artistic heritage, as well as to artists, cultural producers, contemporary culture and institutions throughout Ukraine in their fight for cultural autonomy.
Decentralized Pictures (DCP) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization seeking to discover new and innovative filmmaking talent. We run a democratic film fund and opportunity pool that allows anyone with internet access to apply for financing or support and to have a say in deciding who is most deserving of our support.
Kinotron Group is a collective of filmmakers based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Their films have been screened at film festivals and art institutions worldwide, including International Film Festival Rotterdam, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Docudays UA the Institute of Contemporary Art (London) and e-flux (New York).