Ukrainian Film Week 2026 Returns to Prague with Award-Winning Films and a Once-Banned Classic

Contemporary Ukrainian cinema, powerful documentaries and a rediscovered classic from 1934: Ukrainian Film Week returns to Prague in late November. This year’s festival explores questions of courage, resistance, cultural identity and the lasting consequences of war.

From 24 to 30 November 2026, Prague’s Kino Atlas will host the ninth edition of Ukrainian Film Week. The programme features twelve titles, including productions presented at prestigious international film festivals in Cannes, Venice and Berlin, as well as award-winning films from Toronto and Amsterdam.

Alongside feature films exploring moral choices in extreme situations, different forms of resistance and the long-term consequences of violence, the festival will present documentaries that preserve eyewitness accounts and give a voice to those who have experienced the events first-hand.

Photo: Týden ukrajinského filmu 2026 | Ukrainian Film Week 2026

The festival will open with Rostyslav Kyrpychenko’s drama Vesna (2026), which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The film follows a priest in an occupied town who secretly returns the bodies of executed civilians to their families.

The closing film, Valentyn Vasyanovych’s tragicomedy To the Victory! (2025), won the Platform Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Set in an imagined post-war Ukraine, it follows a filmmaker attempting to rebuild his career and family relationships.

Another highlight is the restored political drama Crystal Palace (1934) by Hryhorii Hrycher-Cherikover. The once-banned film became the first Ukrainian production to be presented in the Berlinale Classics section earlier this year.

Photo: To the Victory! | Týden ukrajinského filmu 2026

Other notable titles include the visually striking documentary Silent Flood, the coming-of-age drama Forever-Forever and Special Operation, which reconstructs the Russian occupation of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant using surveillance camera footage.

According to festival programmer and Ukrainian studies expert Lenka Víchová, the challenge facing Ukrainian filmmakers today is not simply to portray the realities of war, but to explain the events, their causes and their wider implications.

“Many of the films in this year’s programme are international co-productions. Cooperation with foreign partners helps Ukrainian filmmakers to continue their work even under these conditions and bring their stories to audiences beyond the country’s borders,” says Víchová.

The full festival programme and tickets are available at www.kinoatlaspraha.cz.


Týden ukrajinského filmu 2026
Ukrainian Film Week 2026
24 to 30 November 2026 | Kino Atlas
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