„Filma“ Feminist Film Festival opens on November 27

The Feminist Film Festival „Filma“ will run from November 27 to December 10. For two weeks, 14 films will be available on the festival’s website, comprising three programs: the labor rights program „United in Struggle“, the housing rights program „This is an Address“ and the open call program „The Art of Healing“ about traumatic experiences, and ways to heal and find strength.

 The three thematic selections bring together the diverse sufferings and experiences of people who live in different communities, countries, and times, but face universal problems of employment, and housing policy, and the challenges of healing trauma. To quote Anastasiia Bobrova, co-curator of „This is an Address“, „we suggest not only focusing on the personal stories and sufferings of the protagonists but also paying attention to the broader political, economic, and social environment in which the events unfold.“ The festival’s website offers curatorial reflections on each program.

The screenings are free of charge. Most of the films are available online without territorial restrictions, but the experimental work Mast-del by Iranian director Maryam Tafakory from „The Art of Healing“ program will be available only offline in Kyiv, Lviv, and Dnipro. This year, for the first time, Filma is organizing offline screenings in three cities in cooperation with local partner initiatives: FemSolution in Kyiv, Bilkis in Lviv, and ArtSvit Gallery in Dnipro (the screening schedule will be available on the festival website).

This year, the festival team is also returning to the format of online discussions. The program co-curators, together with the directors of the films, invite the audience to reflect on global labor solidarity, fair housing policy, and the struggle for the right to a home. Two meetings will be held via Zoom by prior registration. The working languages of the discussions are English and Ukrainian, with simultaneous translation and interpretation into Ukrainian sign language.

Additionally, interviews with the makers of the films featured in „The Art of Healing“ will be published throughout the festival.

All the films are available in Ukrainian (SDH), in some cases with English subtitles. For the films The Women’s Strike Continues, Rio Turbio, This is an Address, Dear Mandela, and Tell Me a Poem, Ukrainian audio descriptions will be available.

Filma 2023 will be held in cooperation with Freefilmers and with the support of Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in Ukraine. The festival’s media partners are Commons and Cinema.in.UA. The festival program is on the second page of this document.

United in Struggle

A Bonus for Irene
Director: Helke Sander
Germany, 49 minutes, 1971, fiction
Helke Sander portrays Irene, a single mother and worker in a washing machine factory. In everyday life, she doesn’t put up with anything, neither the unequal treatment at work nor the sexual harassment by men. But one thing is clear: without solidarity among her fellow women, she will not stand a chance.

The Women’s Strike Continues
Director: Magda Maria Malinowska
Poland, Germany, 51 minutes, 2018, documentary
Protests against tightening of abortion law prove that women pose a real threat to prevailing power relations. However, this is not the only manifestation of their strength in recent years. The Women’s Strike Continues shows that women’s resistance in Poland has its history.

Complicit
Directors: Heather White, Jialing Zhang
China, USA, 89 minutes, 2017, documentary
Chinese factory worker-turned-activist takes his fight against toxic chemicals used by global electronics brands from his hospital bed to the international stage.

The Globalisation Tapes
Filmmakers: Vision Machine Film Project
Indonesia, 70 minutes, 2003, documentary
Using their own forbidden history as a case study, the Indonesian filmmakers trace the development of contemporary globalisation from its roots in colonialism to the present.

Rio Turbio
Director: Tatiana Mazú González
Argentina, 81 minutes, 2020, experimental
How to film what we are forbidden to experience? How to state what we cannot say? How to record the sound of what does not sound? What place do women occupy in a mining town?

This is an Address

Are You Listening!
Original title: Shunte Ki Pao!
Director: Kamar Ahmad Simon
Fighting against all the odds of the woods, along with around 100 families, they cultivated the land for generations until a tidal surge hit the coastal belts of Bangladesh. Yet after the rain… They go out with spades and shovels to reclaim life again… Are You Listening!

Dear Mandela
Directors: Dara Kell, Christopher Nizza
South Africa, USA, 93 minutes, 2012, documentary
Three young adults in South Africa take their government to court to save their shantytown from destruction.

No Address
Director: Alanis Obomsawin
Canada, 55 minutes, 1988, documentary
“No Address” explores why many young native people leave their communities, what their hopes are, and what they actually find in a big city.

This is an Address
Director: Sasha Wortzel
USA, 18 minutes, 2019, documentary
In this meditation on community, gentrification, and erasure, Stonewall veteran and trans activist Sylvia Rivera takes up residency on the Hudson River piers with a group of HIV-positive New Yorkers, as cranes raze vacant buildings for a new skyline.

The Village of Roses
Director: Hanna Heilborn
Sweden, Italy, 86 minutes, 2023, documentary
A school bus is withdrawn from a suburb of Milan, for no clear reason. By this seemingly small event, “The Village of Roses” unfolds something greater and portrays the structural oppression of the Roma minority, in Italy and the rest of the world.

The Art of Healing

Julie On Line
Original title: Fréquence Julie
Director : Mia Ma
One day, Julie heard voices threatening her. Doctors gave her electroshocks, marabouts tried to exorcise her, she ingested many medicines, drank a lot of potions, spent days in the hospital and long hours locked up at home trying to forget the past and imagine the future.

Mast-del (offline only)
Director: Dan Dansen
Germany, 11 minutes, 2022, experimental
A love song that would never pass through the censors, Mast-del is about forbidden bodies and desires, both inside and outside post-revolution Iranian cinema.

Survivor Manifesto – The Art of Making Kin
Режисер_ка: Дан Дансен
Німеччина, 11 хвилин, 2022, експериментальний фільм
What if we lived in a society in which people who were harmed and people who were harmed could heal simultaneously?

Tell Me A Poem
Authors: Elena Chirila, Ana Gurdiș
Romania, 11 minutes, 2023, experimental
The sequences of a personal diary, highlighting the child-adult evolution, accompany the viewer on a journey marked by uncertainty, helplessness, and self-doubt, which eventually lead to escape. The video poem oscillates between poetry and documentary, emphasizing a woman’s struggle to free herself from repression and regain her voice and strength.

Botanical Documentation of Existence
Director: Darya Tsymbalyuk
Ukraine, 2023, video essay
Mum and I have always been close. This video essay builds on our conversations and Mum’s photos of Kyiv she was sharing with me on WhatsApp after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war cuts deep into the everyday realities, into our most intimate relations, and disfigures the familiar. Against this violence, my mother holds on to life and stays attuned to its diverse forms, and I stay attuned to her.