This year our moderators’ team consists of interesting and creative individuals: filmmakers, journalists, interpreters and volunteers. They will help our audience to highlight key points after films screenings and to understand authors of films who arrive to the festival from all over the world. And before that we kindly asked our moderators to briefly present themselves. So, let’s get acquainted!

Oleksiy Bobrovnykov, GEORGIA EFFECT

A journalist and documentary films author. Served as a trainee at the Reuters agency for international correspondents in Beirut. Received a special prize at the International Festival DetectiveFEST for the film-investigation Vaccine: Business on fear in 2009 (held in Moscow with the assistance of UN). In spring 2011 went on air his film Katyn: Letters from Paradise, which is dedicated to death of Polish officers during the Stalin’s regime. The film was created by the production group of Olieksiy Bobrovnykov with the assistance of Polish Embassy in Ukraine. In 2011-2013 lived and worked in the Caucasus. The purpose of the trip was to write an ethnographic guide, that’s why the author cycled through all boarder areas of Georgia gathering information and observing half-pagan rites which still remain a part of local life. The book Around the lands of Georgia will be published this April in the publishing house KSD.

Oleksandr Vynogradov, DOCU/SHORT, ALIONA VAN DER HORST RETROSPECTIVE

This year I will be moderating the DOCU/SHORT competition program for the second time. The art of the short film is a special one. Being a postgraduate in literary criticism, I am particularly fond of authors like Hawthorne, Kafka or Borges who are able to express the most profound ideas in a very concise form. Documentary shorts are very much like short stories: their brevity is the result of an elaborate director’s work. This year’s program comprises both intimate stories and dramas of a global scale; stories of ordinary people experiencing life-changing encounters with extraordinary people; personal memories, moving and funny, juxtaposed with detached philosophical reflections on the nature of the self. All these stories, joyful or sad, exalted or tragic, are mere pieces of reality, fragmentary and unfinished, just like the life itself. This is why our spectators leave the screening hall touched, indignant or thoughtful, but never indifferent.     

Irina Zaytseva, DOCU/LIFE, DOCU/KIDS

Graduated from the Shevchenko Kiev National University majoring in European languages and literature. As film translator, interpreter and catalogue editor she worked for various film festivals in Ukraine, including Molodist IFF, Odessa IFF, KROK, Contact, Docudays. She has worked for the French Institute and the British Council. She has written articles for Kino-Kolo cinema magazine. As local producer and AD she worked at the documentaries that were shot in Ukraine by various international teams, including such films as English Surgeon, dir. Geoffrey Smith, 2007 and Au coeur de la poudrière ukrainienne, Canal +  production, 2014. Irina has often worked as freelance fixer (assistant journalist) for various international media covering events happening in Ukraine.

Irina  has a whole bunch of various projects, that range from launching a pantomime and mask theatre, publishing her granny’s memoirs, to recording some of Maidan stories experienced by her friends, and making a documentary about one deranged village artist. Irina sincerely admires those authors who manage to turn their full-length projects into reality.

Roman Zinchenko, DOCU/ENERGY

A co-founder of Ukrainian network for green innovations Greencubator and guide of the conference TEDx Kyiv. For 6 years has been promoting ‘smart’ energy and sustainable development, stakes on education and teaching, so that each of us could make a conscious energy choice which sets free from the domination of energy monopolies. Together with Greencubator helps to establish contacts between business, educators and civil organizations in order to cut energy loss and find new energy solutions. Convinced that Ukraine has everything we need in order to transform from and energy-dependent state into energy-leaders. For this purpose we need only to ‘switch on attention’.

Kateryna Popravka, DOCU/BEST, TEMPO PRESENTS

It's been a long time till I've learnt to appreciate documentaries. The childish ideas about documentary films as of long, boring, academic, edifying and message-driven narratives faded when I suddenly thought of documentaries as a way to shape and slightly change the reality. It turned out that documentary filmmaking not just depicts but recreates and fictionalizes reality – it takes the chaos of everyday life and changes it into a clear narrative, or vise versa, provides a touch of creative media mess into simple and habitual things. It takes you into different parts of the world – and moreover – gives you an exclusive glimpse of another person's lives and thought. For me, the eight films in DOCU/BEST and in TEMPO PRESENTS programs this year represent the idea of a simple person making great deeds. Not just the characters in the films, but the crew also. What they provide is an insight of another's person view of the world, a part of someone's thoughts, fears and emotions, a perspective that helps yu to re-imagine your own world as a bit more open and kind. So do that, come to Docudays UA, watch documentaries, re-imaging and re-create your world – it's easy if you try (c)   

Elena Rybak, DOCU/ENERGY

I’ve been engaged in energy sector since 2008 in different roles. For many years I’ve been a director of European-Ukrainian Energy Agency – an association, which unites different market-players for energy-efficiency promotion and development of renewable energy sector. Now I represent the Agency Board and I am also a director of an Austrian engineering company iC consulenten, together with which we work at realization of such projects. I believe fight for energy independence is one of the most important battles which Ukraine must win.

Natalie Sedletska, special screening SINEMA POLITICA

An investigative journalist in Ukraine who is now working as an author and host of the investigave anticorruption TV-program 'Schemes. Corruption in detail' - joint project of Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe and First National TV-Channel of Ukraine. Natalie is Vaclav Havel Fellow of 2013-2014 academic year - joint program of RFE/RL and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. From 2012-2013, Natalie produced and anchored Tender News, a hard-hitting program on corruption and public procurements on Kyiv’s TVi channel.  From 2009-2012 she was a special correspondent for another investigative programme on TVi. Natalie also worked as an investigator and coordinator of the YanukovychLeaks initiative. Sedletska has won top awards for her reporting. She is a member of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community and the Stop Censorship journalism movement in Ukraine. She has a master's degree from the Institute of Journalism at Kyiv National University. 

Irina Tsilyk, DOCU/UKRAINE

It happened so that there are two main passions in my life – cinema and literature (I don’t mention my son here as these are apples and pears). I was born 32 years ago in Kyiv, received education as a filmmaker at The National University of theatre, cinema and television of Karpenko-Kary. Worked for some time in advertisement and with time focused on cinema production. I shot two films as a scriptwriter and a director two short-length films: Blue Hour and Wake. The latter gave me the understanding what it means to take part in international film festivals, some awards, release. This year I should have shot another film but the state froze most of the projects, as you know. Luckily I have my other passion. For a long time I‘ve worked as a lyric-writer, I am also an author of some books published in Ukraine. There are my two new books getting ready for publishing – collection of stories ‘Red traces on black’ in the publishing house Komora and my first experience of literature for children ‘Such interesting life’ in the publishing house ‘Publishing House of Stariy Lev’. It’s a big honor for me to moderate screenings of DOCU/UKRAINE. I am a big fan of your festival and of Ukrainian cinema too.