UFFA Post-event
23 April 2026
This year, the Ukrainian Film Festival in Alberta (UFFA) showcased a selection of compelling contemporary films about Ukraine in both Edmonton and Calgary. These critically acclaimed films have received international recognition and won numerous awards.
Over two weekends, festival-goers had the opportunity to experience some of the most outstanding works of contemporary Ukrainian cinema. All of the films were united by the theme of the full-scale Russian invasion and stories of people living through it firsthand. The Editorial Office, by Roman Bondarchuk, explores bizarre realities in southern Ukraine, while documentary films such as Viktor, by Olivier Sarbil, and My Dear Theo, by Alisa Kovalenko explore the experience of the Russo-Ukrainian war from the perspective of a deaf person who wants to become a soldier and a young mother who is serving in the army. And a new documentary by the Oscar-winning director Mstyslav Chernov, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, showcases the true horrors of the war and the unimaginable price that Ukrainian defenders are paying for the safety of Ukrainian civilians.
The festival culminated in the screening of the Polish feature film Two Sisters, followed by a Q&A session with its director, Lukasz Karwowski, in Edmonton. The Q&A was moderated by Dominique Kirchner Reill, director of the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta, and co-moderated by Victoria Popovych, a Ukrainian community activist, and Dmytro Yesypenko, a research assistant and coordinator of the Sustainable Ukrainian Canadian Heritage program at the Kule Folklore Centre. The Q&A sessions in Calgary took place with the president of the Calgary European Film Festival, Maria Serban, and the executive director of the Calgary Justice Film Festival, Rowan Fisher, following the screenings of My Dear Theo and Viktor. Both sessions were moderated by Mariana Sirko, the UFFA coordinator in Calgary.
UFFA-2026 was co-organized by the Alberta Society for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies, the Peter and Doris Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, and the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies—the latter three all at the University of Alberta. The festival was held in partnership with the Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre at MacEwan University and was financially supported by Razom for Ukraine and the Alberta Ukrainian Commemorative Society.
Festival-goers in Edmonton also had the opportunity to see the travelling photo exhibit “Ukraine: War and Resistance,” initiated by Fulbright Ukraine and the Institute of International Education (IIE) Kyiv Office and hosted for the first time in Canada by the Kule Folklore Centre. General design by Marian Luniv and curatorship in Canada by Oleksandr Pankieiev, Dmytro Yesypenko, Andriyka Reisdorf, and Illia Pokotylo.
