Ukrainian Competition: Selection #3

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.

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.

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.

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.