Donbas within Reach

Dariia Kovalchuk / Czech Republic, Ukraine / 2026 / World Premiere / 21 min.

synopsis

“Things keep exploding here,” residents of Lyman, a Ukrainian town roughly ten kilometres from the front line, confide to the camera. Dariia Kovalchuk travelled there from Prague with a friend. She remembers Donbas as a place where she spent carefree holidays and fell asleep beneath the stars. Now, however, she finds empty streets and houses scarred by Russian shelling. Her personal travel diary captures her sifting through memories and fleeting encounters with people and cats. Returning to a childhood landscape transformed beyond recognition by war becomes a search for what endures of a former home, and what can be preserved, at least in cinematic images.

“When you hear the word Donbas today, the first things that come to mind are ruined towns and houses. But I remember it as the place where I spent my happy, carefree childhood.”

biography

Dariia Kovalchuk (2003) is a filmmaker and a student at FAMU’s Department of Documentary Film. She continued her documentary studies in 2022 after moving from Kyiv to Prague. Her work also explores the experience of exile and the personal trauma of war.