Culture is the mirror of a nation’s soul, and throughout history, Ukrainian women have played a central role in shaping it. Over the years, particularly in recent times, they have used literature and film to navigate trauma, document diverse experiences, and shed light on their incredible resilience and unwavering strength.
The female gaze in Ukrainian cinema and literature always serves as a powerful force. The works in our curated selection address significant issues, including the tension between tradition and modernity, historical trauma, and personal development. They shed light on women’s experiences and challenge our views on masculinity, relationships, and cultural heritage.
By exploring this list, we invite you to gain a deeper understanding of the richness of Ukrainian culture, along with themes of identity and memory.
LITERATURE
Cassandra by Lesya Ukrainka
translated by Nina Murray
A dramatic poem by Ukraine’s most prominent woman writer, reimagining the myth of the Trojan prophetess Cassandra – a woman condemned to speak the truth and never be believed. The work becomes a powerful reflection on prophecy, power, and moral courage – themes that resonate strongly with modern Ukraine.
Olena Stiazhkina, a contemporary Ukrainian writer and historian from Donetsk, explores questions of national identity, war, and occupation in her work. Forced to leave her hometown after Russia’s occupation in 2014, she writes from lived experience in both fiction and nonfiction.
In Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary (2020), translated by Anne O. Fisher, Stiazhkina offers a deeply personal account of the early days of Russia’s invasion and a deeply intimate portrait of her city and its people.
Her novel Cecil the Lion Had to Die (2024), translated by Dominique Hoffmann, traces Ukraine’s modern history through the lives of several families in Donetsk, reflecting the country’s path to independence and Russia’s later attempt to take it away.
Both books offer powerful insights into the history and experience of Ukraine’s eastern region.
Dasein: In Defence of Presence by Yaryna Chornohuz
translated by Amelia Glaser
A testimony from the front lines of Russia’s full-scale invasion written by a woman who is at once a corporal in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, a volunteer paramedic, a Marine, and one of Ukraine’s most celebrated poets.
My Women by Yuliia Iliukha
translated by Hanna Leliv
An urgent and poignant collection of stories of women confronted by the countless brutalities of war. It locates the voices and devastating experiences of those who have been silenced, those who have lost loved ones, those who have fought and persevered, and those who have broken down.
Women and War Letters from Ukraine to the Free World edited by Aurélie Bros
How would you communicate the realities of living in a warzone to someone who has never had this experience? Thirty Ukrainian women, ages 10 to 72, answered this question in letters that emanate power, depth, pain, strength, and resilience.
Sweet Darusya: A Tale of Two Villages by Maria Matios
translated by Michael Naydan and Olha Tytarenko
In a remote Hutsul village in the Carpathians, Darusya – considered a mute “holy fool” by her neighbors – lives with excruciating head pain and a mysterious inner life. Across three interconnected timelines, Matios traces her story from WWII through the Soviet era to the early 2000s, exploring trauma, love, survival, and the everyday magic of rural life.
Looking at Women Looking at War by Victoria Amelina
A diary, a war crimes account, and a tribute to women on the frontlines, the book has been called an instant classic and a searing portrait of resistance and humanity.
Cinema
Traces, 2026
Alisa Kovalenko & Marysia Nikitiuk
From 2014 to 2023, six Ukrainian women, survivors of sexual violence and torture, share their experiences. Traces reveals their resilience and solidarity, transforming their testimonies into an act of remembrance and justice.
Watch the trailer
Streaming: soon
Cuba and Alaska, 2025
Yegor Troyanovsky
Two female medics in Ukraine’s army, whose lives are captured via phone and body cam footage, navigate the chaos of war with bravery, humour and friendship.
Watch the trailer
Streaming: Takflix
Butterfly Vision, 2022
Maksym Nakonechnyi
Returning home from the front line after being held captive for two months, soldier Lilia (29 y.o.) discovers that she is pregnant after being raped by her warden. Will she manage to survive this trauma and save the child in a society that is not ready to accept either of them?
Watch the trailer
Streaming: Takflix
Nice Ladies, 2024
Mariia Ponomarova
With the recent escalation of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the seemingly unbreakable bond of a vibrant cheerleading team of 50+ year old women called “Nice Ladies” is challenged. They face impossible choices between motherland and grandmotherhood, between staying and leaving.
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Streaming: Takflix
Forever Forever, 2023
Anna Buryachkova
Kyiv, late 1990s. Tonia transfers schools to escape violence, only to find herself drawn into a restless group of teenagers testing the limits of love, friendship, and cruelty. Between first desires and reckless games, she falls for the charismatic Zhurik while longing for Sania, caught in a swirl of emotions where innocence and danger intertwine. No one escapes unscathed.
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Streaming: Arte.tv
The Earth is Blue as an Orange, 2020
Iryna Tsilyk
Single mother Anna and her four children live in the front-line war zone of Donbas, Ukraine. While the outside world is made up of bombings and chaos, the family is managing to keep their home as a safe haven, full of life and full of light. Every member of the family has a passion for cinema, motivating them to shoot a film inspired by their own life during a time of war.
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Streaming: Takflix
Ivan and Marta, 2022
Serhiy Bukovskyi
Ivan Dziuba was a literary critic, publicist, and a “symbol of Ukrainian sixtiers.” Lina Kostenko recalls him as a person who always had the courage to speak the truth. As the initiator of the famous protest against the mass arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals during the premiere of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Serhiy Parajanov, alongside Vasyl Stus and Vyacheslav Chornovil, and as the author of the landmark book Internationalism or Russification?, he inevitably drew close attention from the KGB.
Through all the anxieties and repressions associated with his dissident activities, his wife Marta stood by his side. Together they spent 62 years. Ivan and Marta is a tender story of their relationship and Ivan’s active civic stance, told by his wife, who was his steadfast support and the love of his life until the very end.
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Streaming: Takflix
Unavailable, 2018
Nikon Romanchenko
Lyuba works at a pastry shop. Her son is in the war zone and out of communication. The mother goes in search of her son in a territory unknown to her.
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Streaming: Takflix
Intercepted, 2024
Oksana Karpovych
Juxtaposed with images of the destruction caused by the invasion and the day-to-day life of the Ukrainian people who resist and rebuild, the voices of the Russian soldiers – ranging from being filled with heroic illusions to complete disappointment and loss of reason, from looting to committing more horrible war crimes, from propaganda to doubt and disillusionment – expose the whole scope of the dehumanizing power of war and imperialist nature of the Russian aggression.
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Streaming: Takflix
Blindfold, 2020
Taras Dron
Julia, a young MMA fighter, lost her fiancé in the war. She quits the sport and starts a new relationship to free herself from the role of the war hero’s widow, which is imposed on her by the environment.
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Streaming: Takflix, dafilms
Diary of a Bride of Christ, 2022
Marta Smerechynska
For the young girls who choose to become the brides of Christ, their lives are full of His love. The nuns see its manifestation in everything – the removal of their hair and the renunciation of their names. 12 new Ukrainian future nuns take the cross in a remote village in Transcarpathia, near the border between Ukraine and Romania.
A large-scale celebration of the 20th anniversary of the serving of the Argentinean congregation in Ukraine. Hundreds of nuns from all over the world are at a meeting in Rome. And days of absolute silence and intimate personal stories from the nuns about the emergence of their vocation. What is it like to be a bride of Christ?
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Streaming: Takflix
A Portrait Against the Background of Mountains, 2019
Maksym Rudenko
Deep in the mountains, a photographer, Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit, photographed people and the place where she lived for many years. After her death, a box with thousands of her negatives was found. This finding marks the start of the mysterious journey in search of the present and the past, as reflected in the photo negatives discovered by chance.
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Streaming: dafilms
My Dear Theo, 2025
Alisa Kovalenko
Ukrainian volunteer soldier, filmmaker, and mother Alisa Kovalenko creates a testament to the power of love in the time of war – by balancing frontline routines, the horrors of the battlefield, and tender poetic letters to her little son, Théo.
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Streaming: coming soon
Plai. A Mountain Path, 2021
Eva Dzhyshyashvili
This is the story of people who have saved more than they lost under the pressure of our ambivalent present, which has mixed up all the laws of earth and heaven. Their strength and weakness is their love: for their land, for their neighbours. They are both dissident and obedient at the same time, like the mountains.
They rebel against the injustices of life and bravely take all the blows of fate. To the human eye, the Malkovych family is lost among beautiful and harsh nature, but in fact, they are in a place where harmony and love, passed down through generations, have ruled since the beginning of time.
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Streaming: Takflix