Love, war and football: 4 Ukrainian films to watch online for free

A rising female football star, love and conflict in east Ukraine, and a Chernobyl-based mystical thriller: watch four contemporary films screening online at the Ukrainian Film Festival in the UK for free, until 1 December.

The annual event, which has been hosted by the Ukrainian Institute in London and Cambridge University’s Ukrainian Studies department since 2008, also includes digital Q&As with the films’ directors.

Two of the movies address the war in east Ukraine. Korniy Hrytsiuk’s documentary Train: Kyiv-War follows a group of people harbouring starkly different political views but who are united by their desire for peace; traveling side by side, they take a 12-hour train between the Ukrainian capital and the eastern town of Kostiantynivka. In Daria Onyshchenko’s drama The Forgotten, a love story unfolds in Donbas.

Directed by Volodymyr Tykhyy, the mystical thriller The Gateway takes viewers to Chernobyl, where a family matriarch on mushrooms claims to have killed soldiers in the Second World War and predicts the nuclear explosion.

Finally, Alisa Kovalenko’s documentary Home Games is a tribute to female resistance, as rising 20-year-old football star Alina battles poverty, and ultimately gives up her stellar career to care for her two younger siblings.

Find out more here.