Queer Shorts from Ukraine: What Will You Do When the War Continues? + Introduction by Bohdan Zhuk
Exploring queer culture in Ukraine through an array of shorts from across the region.
This short film programme, presented in collaboration with Sunny Bunny LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, explores Ukrainian queer culture and identities, and the multi-layered challenges the community is facing as a direct result of the Russian invasion. The screening will be preceeded by a pre-recorded introduction from Sunny Bunny’s director and main curator Bohdan Zhuk.
Programme
Simeiz
Ukraine 2022 dir Anton Shebetko 18 min
In the Soviet era, an underground gay resort arose in the Crimean village of Simeiz. It started with a small nudist beach and expanded further in the 1990s when a popular bar and night club called Hedgehogs also appeared. Soon, Simeiz became a significant meeting point for members of the LGBTQ+ community from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia until Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Narrated by Zhanna Simeiz, an activist, drag queen, and creator of Hedgehogs, this documentary tells the story of a unique place threatened with disappearance.
Before Curfew
Ukraine 2023 dir Angelika Ustymenko 23 min
Two queer people meet on the train and, reimagining Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, spontaneously decide to get out in Kyiv and spend the day together.
It is romance framed by war, in which intimate conversations and moments of tenderness are interrupted by the sounds of explosions – contrasts too familiar to many Ukrainians today
What Will You Do When the War Continues?
Ukraine 2025 dir Vladyslav Plisetskiy 38 min
Using his own biography, performances, and recordings of phone calls with his father, Vladyslav Plisetskiy explores the deep connection between the personal and the political, as the director’s own search for identity becomes intertwined with the context of war, and the army’s denial of queer soldiers’ existence.
Thu 2 Oct 2025
18:30
Cinema 2
