Public talk: a conversation between the directors of the DOCU/UKRAINE competition and the director Maryna Stepanska about the fractures of reality and how cinema emerges from them

Documentary cinema often grows on the fracture of reality and time. At the open meeting, we will talk about the important fractures that the authors of this year's national competition films have grasped. This is an opportunity to reflect together on the essence of documentary cinema and to find out what discoveries the authors made while working on their films. The conversation will be moderated by the director and screenwriter Maryna Stepanska.

Speakers: Svitlana Lishchynska, Maria Stoyanova, Maria Ponomaryova, Tetyana Dorodnitsyna

Moderator: Maryna Stepanska

Svitlana Lishchynska was born in 1970 in Mariupol. She is a Ukrainian film director who has worked for over 25 years on leading Ukrainian TV channels. Among her works: Mariupol. Reconstruction (2022), The Ballroom King (2019), Treasures of Verona (2019), Invisible Battalion (2017).

Maria Stoianova is a Ukrainian documentary film and editing director. Born and based in Kyiv, she graduated from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (Cultural Studies), the Central European University (Sociology and Social Anthropology), and in 2018, the Serhiy Bukovsky Film Program. Maria works with vernacular video, public and private archives. Her films have been screened at the Jihlava, DOK Leipzig, FIDMarseille, and other international film festivals. Fragments of Ice (2024) is the director's feature debut.

Mariia Ponomarova is a graduate of the Karpenko-Kary Kyiv National University of Film and Television Arts (2013) and the Netherlands Film Academy (2016). Maria's short films have been screened at the Vancouver IFF, Go Short ISFF, Molodist, Artdocfest and other film festivals. Her film May 9th won the Grand Prix at the DocuMa Film Festival, and her debut (as a creative producer), Fragile Memory, was selected for Sheffield DocFest, Krakow Film Festival and Docaviv. Nice Ladies is her debut feature documentary as a director.

Tetiana Dorodnitsyna is a director, editor and artist. She graduated from the Department of Film Directing at the Karpenko-Kary Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts. She has created the short films The Wolf Cubs (2023) and Who is Katya (2019) and worked for TV channels, production companies, and the Kyivtelefilm studio. Tetiana edited the feature-length documentaries Roses. Cabaret Film (2021) by Irena Stetsenko and Askania Reserve (2019) by Andriy Lytvynenko.

Maryna Stepanska is a graduate of the Karpenko-Kary Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts and the ARCHIDOC program at the French school La Femis. She worked at the experimental theater School and studied the methodology of working with non-actors. Her debut, Falling, won international awards and three national Golden Dzyga awards. Maryna is a co-author of the script for the film Forever-Forever directed by Anna Buryachkova. Currently, Maryna is working on a feature-length documentary film, This Is Not a Full Picture, about the lives of Ukrainian filmmakers after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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