Best Ukrainian drama movies
Get ready to binge. We've found a collection of must-watch drama films from Ukraine, now streaming on Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Prime Video, and other top services!
Mr. Jones (2019)
Mr. Jones (2019)
In 1933, Welsh journalist Gareth Jones travels to Ukraine, where he experiences the horrors of a famine. Everywhere he goes he meets henchmen of the Soviet secret service who are determined to prevent news about the catastrophe from getting out. Stalin’s forced collectivisation of agriculture has resulted in misery and ruin—the policy is tantamount to mass murder.
Numbers (2020)
Numbers (2020)
Ten figures walk around in a circle. All they have is a number. The “Great Zero” monitors them. Based on a dystopian parable by Oleg Sentsov, this film was created between Kyiv and the Siberian penal colony where Sentsov spent five years as a political prisoner.
Dovbush (2023)
Dovbush (2023)
In the early eighteenth century, foreign rule means dark times for the Hutsuls of the Carpathians. The two Dovbush brothers become opryshkos - mountain outlaws. But the two brothers become enemies - one cares only about money, the other - Oleksa - fights for his people. The Carpathians are convulsed with a wave of uprisings. The aristocracy uses its military might to try to kill Dovbush and destroy his legend. But Dovbush outwits them. The desperate lords devise a devious plan and attack the invincible outlaw's Achilles heel - his love for his childhood sweetheart, Marichka. Who will be the assassin to attack the Opryshko whose immense strength and bravery inspired folk tales? Will the lords' treacherous plan destroy the hero before he can lead his people to freedom?
The Witch. Revenge (2024)
The Witch. Revenge (2024)
The tale unfolds around an ancient witch from the Ukrainian town of Konotop, who long ago abandoned her extraordinary powers after falling in love with a mortal man. However, tragedy strikes when her beloved is brutally murdered by the russian soldiers as they occupy Konotop in February 2022. Fueled by grief and a thirst for revenge, she reclaims her supernatural abilities, embarking on a blood-soaked quest to mete out justice to her fiancé's killers.
Winter of The Braves (2018)
Winter of The Braves (2018)
1918 Ukraine. Patriotic students, protagonists of the film, get ready to defend Kyiv and fight heroically in the Battle of Kruty. On this historical background reveals the story of the Savytskyi family - the general of Ukraine's counterintelligence and his two sons, Andrii and Oleksa.
Diagnosis: Dissent (2024)
Diagnosis: Dissent (2024)
The protagonist Andrii Dovzhenko finds out a horrible truth, that has been hidden in USSR for years - most of those accused of «anti-Soviet propaganda» were never sent to prison, but to special psychiatric hospitals with a diagnosis of "slow progressive schizophrenia". Andrii finds himself in a real hell of punitive psychiatry and faces a difficult choice - to cooperate with the KGB and return to his family, or to reveal the truth about dissidents tortured in such psychiatric hospitals. The script was based on the memoirs of Soviet dissidents who faced the brutality of a totalitarian system that used so-called "punitive psychiatry" as a weapon against free thought.
Khaytarma (2013)
Khaytarma (2013)
The film tells about the tragic date in the history of the Crimean Tatar people — May 18, 1944 — Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatars. The plot of the film — a pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Amethan Sultan. In May, 1944, a year after liberation of Sevastopol Amethan goes on vacation to his native town Alupka. On May 18 his eyes witness begining of deportation of the Crimean Tatars.
Orange Love (2007)
Orange Love (2007)
A sickly man places a classified ad in which he offers a huge downtown loft apartment, utilities, food and eventual ownership of the flat with just one proviso: the couple who moves in must love each other so much that they can remain in the flat all day until the old man’s death. If one of them leaves, the deal is off. Enter the pale and auburn-haired Katya, a cellist who meets photographer Roman, a handsomely muscular young man.
Myrnyi-21 (2023)
Myrnyi-21 (2023)
The story of trust and its absence against the background of events unfolding in Eastern Ukraine in early 2014. The main topic is revealed through the prism of the Luhansk border base, whose fighters the separatists and Russian special services tried unsuccessfully force to betray their country.
The Deadly Alive (2015)
The Deadly Alive (2015)
Everything is destined, isn't it?
Story of R32 (2014)
Story of R32 (2014)
The sad tale of R32, an old obsolete and lonely robot who got replaced by a newer model by its previous owners and now roams the streets alone. He’s running low on repairs but all he needs is a helpful hand.
Chervonyi (2017)
Chervonyi (2017)
Year 1947. Commander of UPA Danylo Chervonyi gets into the terrible slaughter of Stalin's camps, where he must go through hell and inhumane prison conditions, prosecution of criminal leaders, meanness, betrayal and despair. Danylo finds the strength to resist repression of the camp commander and makes a desperate attempt to break free, raising the first rebel in the camp.
Call Sign "Banderas" (2018)
Call Sign "Banderas" (2018)
In the autumn of 2014, in the ATO zone, an intelligence group headed by experienced captain Anton Saienko (called by nickname "Banderas") tries to prevent sabotage and neutralize the Russian saboteur.
Obitnytsia (1992)
Obitnytsia (1992)
Love triangle revealed during a wedding is set to a backdrop of Ukrainian history and tradition, with questions of honor and faithfulness asked.
Homeward (2019)
Homeward (2019)
Having lost his oldest son in the war between Russia and Ukraine, Mustafa resolves to bring the boy’s body to the land of his birth: Crimea. Together, he and his younger son set out on a journey that will profoundly mark their relationship.
Black Raven (2019)
Black Raven (2019)
Ukraine 1922. The Russian empire has already broken up, but a new state has not yet been formed. Many tried to create and consolidate their independence during this period, and this is the story of one of such people. This is the story of the life and love of one person - Ivan, nicknamed Raven ...
Censored (2019)
Censored (2019)
This is a metaphorical story about the tragic and mysterious death of the most powerful poet of 1960s, human rights activist, hero of Ukraine Vasyl Stus and his struggle with the Soviet system. The events of the film unfold during the last attempt by the KGB to seduce the poet with a whimsical "freedom".
Stop-Zemlia (2022)
Stop-Zemlia (2022)
Hanging out with friends, smoking a lot, spinning bottles and kissing, making mistakes, playing, refusing to accept, dreaming with open eyes - life as a teenager can be overwhelmingly beautiful and difficult at the same time. In her debut, the Ukrainian director composes a deeply emotional and multi-layered portrait of a generation whilst seamlessly flowing between the fictional and the documental.
Such Beautiful People (2014)
Such Beautiful People (2014)
This gorgeous movie—artfully composed in a muted sandy palette with exquisite attention to visual detail—takes place on the shores of the Black Sea in Crimea, where a group of neighbors seek tranquility and fulfillment fishing and striving to live lives of meaning, outside the bustle and cynicism of city life. This is a film about universal themes of human interaction and love and explores the full range of human desires and relationships. Such Beautiful People is a gentle story of gentle people striving to make their lives better, to find true happiness, and to better understand one another. (via cinema.indiana.edu)
Hetman (2015)
Hetman (2015)
Artistic portrayal of the difficult personality of Bohdan Khmelnytsky and his dramatic life against the backdrop of National-liberation war in the mid-17th century and the Cossack state building. The main storyline shows Khmelnytsky not only as hetman and commander, but reveals his private life and his complicated relations with his beloved woman.
House with a Turret (2012)
Let's Dance (2019)
Let's Dance (2019)
Nikita, talented young dancer, enters Let's Dance competition to earn money for his brother's surgery but a brief encounter with a famous singer Liza, who hosts the competition, puts his chances of winning and even life at risk.
Kings of Rap (2023)
Kings of Rap (2023)
A seventeen-year-old village school graduate, a guy nicknamed Kazan, dreams of becoming a famous rapper and winning the heart of Sveta. For the sake of his dream, he is willing to risk everything, but circumstances steer his life in a different direction.
Foreign Prayer (2017)
Foreign Prayer (2017)
Nazi-occupied Crimea, 1944. A boy named Itzhak turns to Saide Arifova, a local Tatar Muslim woman, for help, explaining that he and a group of other Jewish orphans are hiding from the Nazis. Arifova faces a moral dilemma: should she try to help them or save herself by refusing? Despite the impending danger, she decides to protect the children by hiding them in plain sight, and disguising them as Tatars and adopting them into the local community.
The Secret Diary of Symon Petliura (2018)
The Secret Diary of Symon Petliura (2018)
The Secret Diary of Simon Petliura takes an unprecedented look at the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic, which declared an independent Ukraine in 1918, and the later assassination of the UNR's chairman, Symon Petliura in Paris in 1926, orchestrated by the Kremlin at the start of the Soviet occupation of Ukraine.
Why I'm Alive (2021)
Why I'm Alive (2021)
Mariupol. Pre-war life in a small Ukrainian town on the shore of the Azov Sea, with a good family life, quarrelsome neighbors, amateur opera, denunciations to the NKVD, and a dance floor in the city garden, the persecution of religion and, of course, with love.
Jacob's Century (2016)
Jacob's Century (2016)
Human history, which is against the will was drawn into historical conflicts.