Student Films
The boldest work by film-school students from around the world — first steps by directors who will shape the language of cinema tomorrow.
Short Films
Short films by emerging professional directors: concise, precise and surprising stories that fit a whole world into a few minutes.
Full-length Films
Debut feature films — the heart of the Molodist competition: new names in world cinema, discovered first in Kyiv.
Short Film Competition
The year's best Ukrainian short films — a fresh perspective from a new generation of Ukrainian filmmakers.
Documentary Competition
Documentary cinema that explores reality unvarnished: personal stories, urgent themes and new forms of storytelling.
Teen Screen
Films about and for teenagers — on growing up, friendship, first love and finding yourself.
Ukrainian Premieres
New Ukrainian films that audiences will see on the big screen for the first time at Molodist.
Festival of Festivals
The year's key films from the world's leading film festivals — on the big screen in Kyiv.
Midnight Special
Genre, strange and provocative cinema for those who aren't afraid of late-night screenings.
FORMA (Experimental Program)
Experimental cinema that tests the limits of form, sound and image.
Scandinavian Panorama
A selection of contemporary Nordic cinema — restrained, profound and visually refined stories.
Century
A retrospective marking the centenaries of great filmmakers — classics worth seeing on the big screen.
Special Events
Special screenings, filmmaker encounters and the festival's satellite projects — features and shorts.
Opening Film
The film that opens the 55th edition of Molodist.
Closing Film
The film that closes the festival after the awards ceremony.
Full-length films
Block 1

Bitter Kiss
Hasan Ege Çalışkan
A chance reunion with a childhood friend forces an introverted young man to confront the dark desires he has spent years trying to suppress.

Restricted Area
Jan Górecki
Karol, a Warsaw-based driver of Ethiopian descent, is brutally assaulted on his way to Białowieża and illegally pushed across the border. Wandering through the border forest, he experiences the reality of migrants trapped between systems of violence.

Shutterspeed
Jasper De Maeseneer
Fifteen-year-old Cas poses for his school’s trainee teacher and amateur photographer Jard. When he becomes painfully aware of the power imbalance between them, he seeks to reverse their dynamic.

The Flowers of Malva
Anna Lys, Rémy Berlemont, Alice Hamel, Chen-Yun Hu, Ludivine Lebourg, Estelle Martin, Agathe Ribout
In a small village in the Ukrainian countryside, Nina, a grandmother deeply attached to her land, welcomes her granddaughter Yana for what appears to be a simple holiday. In reality, she is trying to hide the war that is ravaging the country from her granddaughter by creating an imaginary world where everything is fine.

"Vaterland" Or A Bule Named Yanto
Berthold Wahjudi
When German-Indonesian Yanto visits his younger sister in Yogyakarta, he expects a simple reunion – until he realises she belongs more effortlessly than he ever has. As envy and dissonance between siblings surface, Yanto’s journey becomes a bittersweet exploration of mixed-race identity.
Block 2

Rabbit Heart
Stella Fachinger
An abandoned factory site. Twelve-year-old Hannes pushes his little brother Oli into increasingly dangerous tests of courage with a bow and arrow. When he puts them both in a life-threatening situation, his power begins to crumble.

Reminiscence
Iryna Melnychenko
Ira Melnichenko, a young Ukrainian refugee in Switzerland with her brother, creates a doll in her own image, through which she revisits the story of a family torn apart by the death of her father, a 2D animator in Kyiv, destroyed by alcohol and dereliction.

Sundown
Jérémie Jayraj Itty, Inna Soroka, Julia Estrada Torres, Sammi Khuu
Joakim, a young, compassionate caregiver working in a dementia ward, navigates the emotional toll of his work as he learns to accept the limits of his ability to help.

The Bistro
Skaistė Bartkutė
One summer, a twelve-year-old girl works at her grandma’s bistro, full of strange adults.

The Bright Hours
Yeh Chia-chen
Ten-year-old Great Demon is a whirlwind of mischief and imagination, leaving chaos and laughter in his wake. But beneath his wild antics lies a quiet loneliness. One ordinary day, a strange new friend named Ke appears out of nowhere, turning Great Demon’s world upside down.

White-Knuckle Summer
Jason Hogan
Set in a divided British seaside town, ten-year-old Ruby forms an unlikely friendship with Hasset, an asylum seeker living in a local hotel, as one summer of freedom collides with the threat of rising anti-migrant protests.
Block 3

C'est La Vie
Zheng Zihan
Forced to track down his runaway, dialysis dependent grandfather, a struggling art student is pulled into an absurd road trip to catch a legendary fish journey that brings him face to face with the old man’s fading past, and his own stalled life.

Kamathipura Express
Leon Korzynski
A young Polish man, Osa, lives in the slums of Mumbai, where he falls in love with Sapna, a teenage dancer from a poor family. When Sapna's father tries to sell her to a brothel, the couple is forced on a desperate run across India.

La Forma Cannibale
Ginevra Solaroli
After Giovanna's death, Ivan clings to her gestures, objects, and rituals. What begins as a tribute gradually turns into an obsession, until it blurs the boundaries between identity, love and memory.

Meat
Adolfo Margulis
Jak, a young Haitian migrant, must reach the U.S. border with his father, but his mother’s disappearance forces him to choose between continuing or confronting the past.

Un verre de souvenir
Louis Marguerite
At a reception held in honour of his late wife, André, an elderly man whose memory is failing, tries to reconnect with his past and those around him.
Block 1

Auntie Lica The Hunchback
Paul-Razvan Macovei
Eva flies back from France expecting a simple funeral. What she gets is a hunchbacked grandma, a furious village priest, and a coffin that just won’t fit.

Diego
Mélissa Silveira
Vanessa, 21, lives with her brother Diego, 20, who has a disability, and their father Antonio, a strong-willed Gypsy man. The happy, well-oiled routine of this trio is disrupted by Diego’s sexual awakening. While Antonio is proud to introduce his son to a virile form of masculinity, Vanessa realizes that her brother prefers men.

The Cut
Julia Staniszewska
Piotr is 24 years old and has just met the woman of his life. As usual, he comes to tell his mother about it. At first, he does not notice that the roles are just turning and now she will need him.

The Man Without Qualities
Sofia Romano
After yet another failed review interview at the Ministry of Labor and Productivity, the visual artist Ultimo, sinks into an existential crisis. When he is ultimately declared a “ marginal worker, ” he embarks on a radical metamorphosis.

Thunder
Mauricio Carrasco Tolosa
La Foudre, a social media vigilante, becomes famous through his punitive raids livestreamed on the internet. But spectacle justice doesn't come without risks...
Block 2

Gallina
Fernando Reinaldos
In rural Spain, ten-year-old Pablo loves spending time at his granny’s countryside home, playing with his younger sister Alba and his best friend Martín. But everything changes when Martín pressures him to betray his family, leaving Pablo to question where he truly belongs.

Procedure
Rabia Özmen
Murat, who has just been imprisoned, asks for a request to his wife Sema, which is against the procedures. Sema cannot stand her husband’s pressure and tries to get Murat’s request into the prison by illegal means. But the prison has excessive precautions.

Sand
Shahaf Sinai, Eyal Roe
Elisha wakes to a crumbling reality. The wind never stops blowing, the sand keeps accumulating, burying everything. Medea arrives, his long-lost love, elegant and alive, trying to reach through.

Silence
Pavlo Shpegun
After a failed performance, Luka, a young stand-up comedian, meets a mysterious girl in a bar. They quickly find common ground, and she spends the night at his place. They talk about their loneliness, pain, and personal losses, all while trying to maintain an emotional distance from one another. But when all the necessary words finally run out – silence falls.

The Buzz
Kate Del Castillo
During a live national television interview, Veronica, a celebrated and admired actress, struggles to uphold the image of a perfect life while her inner world fractures under the weight of private abuse. Trapped between silence, fear, and a sudden panic attack, she must decide whether to continue performing the illusion—or break the cycle in front of everyone.

Valentine's Day
Anton Iffland Stettner
Agathe, married with two children, receives a text message for Valentine's Day inviting her to a hotel room.
Block 3

Aasmani
Sayani Gupta
In Hindi, Aasmani means that shade of light blue which is the colour of the sky. To Smita, a spunky woman in her sixties, her steadfast companion of over five decades, a powder blue vintage FIAT called Aasmani is the very sky that shaped her life. But now she struggles with the choice of selling her beloved vintage car, Aasmani, when her 10 year old granddaughter, Tiya, steps up to save the day.

Another Day In The Metal Box
Gleb Feldman
When a Ukrainian factory worker finds a mysterious object hidden in an abandoned workshop, he must choose between the safety of the life he knows and the dream he has never dared to pursue.

Breadsong
Katariina Aule
19th century rural family discover a catchy song that is broadcasted from the future through the family children after they are accidentally fed some mouldy bread. It is a story about greed, and how gold fever can make a man blind to true treasures in life, eventually breaking a family.

Conception Game
Natalie Arle-Toyne
When single Missy (39), fresh from heartbreak and desperate to conceive, discovers a world of free sperm, she dives right in. But semen with no strings attached is scuppered when newbie Patrick (40) unwittingly breaks the rules of the game.

Mourners
Rebeca Arnal
A group of women wearing traditional mourning clothes arrives at a mansion to take part in a funeral ritual.

Welcome to Tool Shed
Andrew Klaus-Vineyard, Daniel Talbott
The film examines the generation who never expected to become senior citizens in the face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and decades of oppression, who now find themselves trailblazers again as the first openly LGBTQ seniors.
Block 1
Block 2
Block 3
Block 4

After School
Merijn Scholte Albers, Tobias Smeets
Fortysomething high school teacher Edwin is a cringy control freak, who faces rejection from family and colleagues. After his boss denies him a promotion due to his weak personality, he seeks help from a crude gym teacher whose advice leads to chaos.

Ben'Imana
Marie-Clementine Dusabejambo
Vénéranda works in community justice and reconciliation after genocide. A family crisis tests her beliefs. The film follows women rebuilding lives amid shared trauma, showing how the past shapes their present.

Caity
Lindsay Calleran
16 year-old Caity and her newly sober father, Paul, co-operate their family business: a locally-beloved haunted house. When Paul relapses, Caity tries to cover for him but struggles to manage as she tests the limits of her own relationship to substances and falls for a new employee, Hannah.

Camouflage
Mykyta Gibalenko
22-year-old Vitalik dreams of starting a new life in Germany, leaving his mother Tetiana and sister Zhenya behind in Ukraine. When Russia launches its full-scale invasion, everything changes: Vitalik’s family is forced to flee and join him in Germany. Along with them come old conflicts and unresolved emotions—things no distance from the war can ever erase.

Filipiñana
Rafael Manuel
While working at an elite country club outside Manila, a 17-year-old Ilocana worker uncovers the violent truths of her workplace, her country, and her own past after attempting to return a lost golf club to the club’s president.

Flesh & Fuel
Pierre le Gall
A lonely French trucker's routine life on the road takes an unexpected turn when he encounters a Polish driver. As feelings develop, he struggles to balance his demanding job with a chance at love, determined to make their connection work.

Lemonade
Kim Bartley
Teenage Danny makes a life-altering mistake, then reunites with Josh, a social worker whose past errors once separated them. Josh mentors Danny through first love and loss, teaching him that true family are those who believe in you.

Our Father
Goran Stankovic
Dejan, a drug addict, is undergoing rehabilitation at a monastery. Gradually, he becomes the right-hand man of the priest who runs the commune. When the priest takes his methods too far, Dejan has to choose between protecting the system and the truth.

Trial of Hein
Kai Stänicke
After 14 years, Hein returns to his island village, but the community doesn't recognize him and demands a trial to prove his identity.

Where To
Assaf Machnes
A Palestinian Uber driver and a lost young Israeli cross paths during multiple taxi rides through Berlin, leading to unexpected moments that blend humor and heartache as their journeys unfold.

