LIFF Wiz-Art’25 announces National Competition

HELLO, I’M ON THE HILL // 14 min., Liza Pyrozhkova, Ukraine, 2024

In the destroyed city of Izium, Kharkiv region, Kremyanets Hill has become an “island of communication”, where people can find mobile connection with their families after months of Russian occupation.

HOME IS 1117 KM AWAY // 17 min., Marta Smerechynska, Ukraine, Hungary, 2024

Maria, who was forced to leave Ukraine, looking for a female roommate in Budapest. The talks with potential neighbors about food habits and cleanliness, transition into the conversations about the feeling of home and loneliness. When Ukrainian girls visit Maria, the search for a neighbour turns into an exchange of thoughts and feelings about the traumatic experiences of war and forced displacement.

ADDITIONAL SCENES // 15 min., Roman Khimei, Yarema Malashchuk, Ukraine, 2024

On Day 377 of the Russian-Ukrainian War, in Kyiv, a man debates with his wife about the pillows — which one is for sleeping and which one is not. And why should we make a film about the war, anyway?

SONIA’S BLOSSOM // 15 min., Nataliia Suprun, Ukraine, 2025

In one of the hamlets, the orchards started to bloom. Sonia is hurrying to a date. She is about to undergo initiation into adulthood through her first sexual experience. But the frost is coming and it can kill the blossom.

KYIV CAKE // 22 min., Mykyta Lyskov, Ukraine, Estonia, 2025

The events of the movie unfold in modern Ukraine. A child is born into a poor family, the parents do everything possible to survive, but just when the crisis reaches its peak, a new danger flares up.

CURFEW // 23 min., Yelyzaveta Toptyhina, Ukraine, 2025

During an expedition, a young photographer miscalculates the time and misses her ride back to the city. At a bus stop, she meets a young man celebrating his birthday. With curfew approaching, the two strangers are forced to spend the night together at a roadside hotel.

SHRIMP, SWITCH, CIGARETTE BUTT & A LITTLE BOTTLE // 17 min., Olha Pyrozhyk, Ukraine, 2025

Two sisters meet in a city café. One of them, carefree and cheerful, takes the other on a motorcycle ride to the forest. The girls climb a gloomy sandy slag heap. They spend the night by a campfire near a body of water that resembles a fragment of the underworld. Their conversations seem strange: about shrimp farming, death, and a mysterious switch that can determine whether what they’re experiencing is a dream or reality.

UNAVAILABLE // 20 min, Kyrylo Zemlyanyi, Ukraine, 2025

During the first months of the war, young Serhii moves to western Ukraine, where he works as a volunteer in a humanitarian warehouse. The day when his mother decides to leave the area occupied by the Russian army, they lose their telephone connection. The next day, Serhii learns that a humanitarian convoy from his hometown has been destroyed in a bombing raid.

A DAY WITH POLLY // 12 min., Nazar Onufriv, Ukraine, 2025

Through the eyes of 8-year-old Polly, the film follows a family traveling to the countryside amid the ongoing war in Ukraine. Even though the parents try to hold on to a sense of normalcy, cruelty and violence still find their way into Polly’s fragile childhood.

THOUGHTS ON PEACE IN AN AIR RAID // 16 min., Vyacheslav Turyanytsya, Ukraine, 2025

On a warm fall day, a construction worker decides to have a lunch break, a young girl takes care of her elderly grandmother, a film director tries to edit his documentary footage.

DADDY’S LITTLE SCRATCH // 24 min., Yehor Harmash, Ukraine, 2025

For the first time, Slava spends a whole day with her father, Roman, who is home on a short leave from the war. They go to another city to return a pricy carpet Roman bought to Slava as a gift and try to bridge the gap that formed between them during his eight-year service. Suddenly Slava finds herself in need to figure out who this stranger her dad has become.

BEWARE OF THE GOOD DOG // 26 min., Adelina Borets, Ukraine, 2024

Stepan regularly adopts old dogs from the shelter, who spend their last days beside him and die peacefully. It’s his own way of coming to terms with the end of his life. He dreams die peacefully in old age during the war in Ukraine. But peace is a privilege stolen by the young boy Gogo. What happens when two enemies of different ages but equally lonely meet at the cemetery at night? They’ll smoke, eat a basket of ice cream, and dance.

DRIVING LESSONS // 18 min., Anastasiya Gruba, Ukraine, 2024

Wartime Kyiv, Ukraine. A father helps his daughter to practice driving. They are the only relatives to each other and have a strong connection, but many disagreements in their opinions. The driving lesson ceases to be ordinary when the father is issued a summons at a checkpoint.

BLUEBERRY SUMMER // 19 min., Masha Kondakova, Ukraine, France, 2024

This summer, Ksyusha has to spend it harvesting blueberries in the forest of Kyiv with her mother and sister to earn a living for her family. But she is distracted, waiting for her lover Misha. As they flirt, they go deeper and deeper into the forest, unaware of the danger.

I DIED IN IRPIN // 11 min., Anastasiia Falileieva, Ukraine, Slovakia, Czech Republic

24 February 2022 my boyfriend and I fled from Kyiv to Irpin. We spent 10 days in blockaded city and managed to escape with the last evacuation convoy. Time passed, but the feeling that I died in Irpin never left me since then. The film reconstructs this true story of survival through a personal and subjective lens.