Description

Join us for a two-day Ukrainian Film Festival co-sponsored by the Ukrainian Community of Western PA (UCOWPA) and the University of Pittsburgh (REEES Department).

Saturday, September 21st (doors open at 3:45pm):

4:00pm - Donbass: "The action of the film takes place in the Donbass, a region of Eastern Ukraine, occupied by various criminal gangs. The fighting is going on between the Ukrainian regular army, supported by volunteers, and separatist gangs, supported by Russian troops. It is a hybrid war, happening alongside an open armed conflict, accompanied by killings and robberies on a mass scale, and a gradual degradation of the civilian population. There is fear, deception, hatred and violence everywhere. The society is collapsing, and death and deadly silence lie upon the place. The state of war reaches its climax. The situations and circumstances, which seem to be absurd, grotesque, even comic, and almost impossible to imagine, do happen in real life. Sometimes, the participants of the events fail to believe that this is happening to them for real. And yet – these events do happen for real. They happen because the iron logic of the underworld, which affected all those generations born and bred in the catastrophe, that was the USSR, dictates its own rules. In my opinion, the war taking place right now is similar to the one fought 70 years ago – at once a patriotic and a civil war." (Sergei Loznitsa, director)

Won the Best Director Prize in the Un Certain Regard Section of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.

30-minute intermission

7:00pm - Breaking Point: The Fight for Democracy in Ukraine: is an intimate look at the war and revolution in Ukraine through the eyes of ordinary people who risked their lives to create a more democratic, equitable, and independent country. Our principal characters are a children's theater director, a doctor, a rabbi, a TV journalist, an investigative reporter, and a lawyer turned medic and her soldier husband. Their lives were transformed by the tumultuous, three-month revolution on the Maidan, which ended in the death of 123 protesters and the flight of corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych. When Russia retaliated by annexing Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine, our subjects went to war to defend and remake their country. Our film depicts this intense and on-going struggle, which has so far killed 10,000 Ukrainians and displaced 1.9 million refugees. BREAKING POINT is the dramatic and inspiring portrait of people willing to give up their private, normal lives to unite in a collective effort to bring the rule of law and democracy to their country. Their battle to wrest power from the autocrats and plutocrats who control their governments is a struggle that is being waged around the world, from the Mideast to America. The outcome affects not only the future of Ukraine, but the future of democracy throughout the world. (IMDb)

Nominated for Social Justice Award at the 2017 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

These movies are presented in Ukrainian and Russian, with English subtitles.

Any unsold seats will be available for free to current University of Pittsburgh students who present a valid student ID at the door.