10 Best Movies Set in or About Ukraine

10 Movies Set in or About Ukraine

Foreign-led films whose sustained setting or subject remains centered on Ukraine.

1. 

   1. Volhynia

   Wołyń · 2016

   In 1943, a young Polish woman in love with a Ukrainian man is caught up in the horrific ethnic massacres that engulf the borderland region of Volhynia, tearing communities apart. Wojciech Smarzowski's brutal, unflinching wartime drama.

   Film notes
2. 

   2. Everything Is Illuminated

   2005

   A young Jewish American travels to Ukraine with a pair of eccentric local guides to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis, on a journey that unearths a village's buried tragedy. A whimsical, ultimately moving drama.

   Film notes
3. 

   3. Arsenal

   Арсенал · 1929

   A shell-shocked soldier returns to Kyiv amid the revolutionary upheaval following World War I, where nationalists and Bolsheviks clash, culminating in the suppressed uprising at the Arsenal factory. Oleksandr Dovzhenko's fervent silent epic.

   Film notes
4. 

   4. Ukraine: masks of the revolution

   Украйна: Маските на революцията · 2016

   This controversial French documentary offers a contrarian view of Ukraine's 2014 Maidan uprising, arguing that far-right paramilitary groups played a darker role than Western media acknowledged. A polemical political film.

   Film notes
5. 

   5. The Fixer

   1968

   In tsarist Russia, a poor Jewish handyman who has drifted to Kyiv is falsely accused of the ritual murder of a Christian child and thrown into prison, where he endures years of torment while refusing to confess. A powerful drama based on a true case.

   Film notes
6. 

   6. Taras Bulba

   1962

   In 16th-century Ukraine, the son of a fierce Cossack chieftain is torn between loyalty to his warrior people and his forbidden love for a Polish noblewoman, as war rages between Cossack and Pole. A sweeping historical adventure epic.

   Film notes
7. 

   7. Bitter Harvest

   2017

   Set against the man-made famine that Stalin engineered to crush Ukraine in the early 1930s, this drama follows a young artist fighting to survive and reunite with his love amid the horrors of the Holodomor. A historical romance-drama.

   Why & details

   Curator’s note: A romantic historical drama set during the Holodomor in Soviet Ukraine.

   Film notes
8. 

   8. Universal Soldier: Regeneration

   2009

   When terrorists seize the Chernobyl site and threaten nuclear disaster, a reactivated cyborg supersoldier is deployed to stop them and confront an even deadlier enemy. A brutal, stripped-down action sequel.

   Film notes
9. 

   9. Chernobyl: Abyss

   Чернобыль · 2021

   In the immediate aftermath of the 1986 reactor explosion, a firefighter joins the doomed volunteers who descend into the flooded, radioactive plant to prevent an even greater catastrophe. A Russian disaster drama.

   Why & details

   Curator’s note: A disaster drama about the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Soviet Ukraine.

   Film notes
10. 

    10. Chernobyl Diaries

    2012

    Six tourists hire an extreme-tour guide to sneak into Pripyat, the abandoned town beside the Chernobyl reactor, and find they are not as alone in the irradiated ruins as they thought. A found-footage horror.

    Why & details

    Curator’s note: A horror film centered on Pripyat and the legacy of the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

    Film notes