Since 2014, in the aftermath of the Ukrainian revolution, and parallel to the war raging in Donbas, Ukrainian cinema has undergone an unprecedented development, both in fiction and documentary. While the country in (re)inventing its identity, its political and social model, what are the main patterns of the new Ukrainian cinema? Does the Ukrainian cinema contributes to the modeling of new civic values? What does Ukrainian films reflect about a society on the move?

While the country is reinventing its identity, filmmakers are exploring different corners of a country faced to a war on its own territory. A new generation of directors has emerged, bringing Ukraine in international festivals. What do they have to say about their country to the world, but even more important, how can directors contributes to the modeling of a new identity. Can they be heard within their own society?

There are two opposing trends taking place in Eastern Europe: "de-communization" and "re-communization". The whole controversy is not about communist ideology but about authoritarianism. In an increasingly visible worldwide confrontation between new authoritarianism and liberal democratic values, Eastern Europe, and Ukraine in particular, plays a vital role. To Putin's "re-communization", i.e. return to old Soviet practices and authoritarian politics, Ukraine after 2014 "Revolution of Dignity" tried to oppose "de-communization".

In a broader sense Ukraine's de-communization meant freedom against oppression, pluralism against coercion, justice against arbitrariness. But did Ukraine succeed on this path? Did "de-communization" lead to a deeper social change, or it stopped on the surface? Did it break from the Soviet past, or it imitated its practices? And finally, what Ukrainians want to do with this "empty pedestal"?