10 Best Ukrainian Movies to Watch First

10 Essential Ukrainian Films

Ranked native cinema in Ukraine’s own creative voice.

1. 

   1. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

   Тіні забутих предків · 1965

   In the Carpathian mountains of 19th-century Ukraine, a Hutsul man is bound by fate to the daughter of the family that killed his father, in a passionate, tragic love steeped in folk ritual and the rhythms of nature. Sergei Parajanov's ecstatic, ravishing visual poem.

2. 

   2. Earth

   Земля · 1930

   In a Ukrainian village, the arrival of a tractor and the drive for collective farming set young Communists against the old landowning order, in a lyrical meditation on life, death, and the soil. Oleksandr Dovzhenko's luminous silent masterpiece.

3. 

   3. Man with a Movie Camera

   Человек с киноаппаратом · 1929

   A cameraman roams a bustling Soviet city from dawn to dusk, and the film exuberantly turns the everyday into spectacle through dazzling montage, split screens, and every trick of the medium. Dziga Vertov's revolutionary, plotless documentary landmark.

4. 

   4. 20 Days in Mariupol

   2023

   A team of Ukrainian journalists trapped inside the besieged city of Mariupol at the start of the Russian invasion risks everything to document the atrocities and get their footage out to the world. Mstyslav Chernov's harrowing, Oscar-winning frontline documentary.

5. 

   5. 2000 Meters to Andriivka

   2025

   During a faltering counteroffensive, a journalist embeds with a Ukrainian platoon on a grueling mission to advance a single mile through heavily fortified forest and retake an occupied village. A visceral, immersive war documentary.

6. 

   6. The Tribe

   Плем'я · 2014

   A new student at a Ukrainian boarding school for the deaf is drawn into its brutal criminal underworld of theft and prostitution, and into a doomed affair. Told entirely in sign language with no subtitles or dialogue, a startling, uncompromising drama.

7. 

   7. Donbass

   Донбас · 2018

   Told in a series of grotesque, blackly comic episodes, this film plunges into the surreal, propaganda-soaked chaos of eastern Ukraine's war, where truth and lies, farce and atrocity blur together. Sergei Loznitsa's savage political mosaic.

8. 

   8. My Thoughts Are Silent

   Мої думки тихі · 2019

   A twenty-five-year-old sound recordist dreaming of emigrating to Canada takes one last job — capturing the call of a rare bird in the Carpathians — accompanied by his overbearing mother, on a bittersweet road trip. A deadpan, tender comedy.

9. 

   9. The Guide

   Поводир · 2014

   In 1930s Soviet Ukraine, a young American boy orphaned amid Stalinist persecution is taken in by a blind wandering minstrel, and the two flee across a land where the regime is silencing the very singers who keep the nation's memory alive. A sweeping historical drama.

10. 

    10. Bad Roads

    Погані дороги · 2020

    Four unflinching stories play out along the war-torn roads of the Donbas, where checkpoints, captivity, and casual cruelty leave no one safe and no one able to make sense of the chaos. A raw, harrowing anthology drama.