Zelenskyy: The Man Who Took on Putin

Mar 26, 2022

0h 30m

★ 6.0

Overview

The rise of the comedian, actor and entertainer who became the improbable wartime leader. Exploring the man behind the series of game changing social media and TV appearances which have encapsulated the defiant response of a nation.

Genres

Documentary

Zelenskyy: The Man Who Took on Putin Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Self - Presenter

Matt Frei

Self (archive footage)

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Self (archive footage)

Joe Biden

Self

Uilleam Blacker

Self

Oleksandr Danylyuk

Self

Viv Groskop

Self (archive footage)

Boris Johnson

Self

Daria Kaleniuk

Self

Orysia Lutsevuch

Self (archive footage)

Vladimir Putin

Self

Anna Reid

Self (as Prof Robert Service)

Robert Service

Due to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, tens of thousands of Ukrainians, fleeing the war, found refuge in Uzhhorod in western Ukraine. The local director decides to attract non-professional actors -displaced people - in bringing his dream into life - to stage the King Lear play. The theatrical performance helps them find themselves and their purpose in a new world where there is war, and the director finds an answer to the eternal question of what love is and why this world should not perish.

0.0

Poliske Nets

Aug 22, 2021

Poliske was contaminated with radioactive material after the 1986 Chornobyl disaster. Soviet authorities did everything they could to erase the ancient history of this town, and after Chornobyl, they destroyed its future.

0.0

After the Rain: Putin's Stolen Children Come Home

Aug 29, 2024

Deep in a forest by the Baltic Sea, a group of Ukrainian families come together to start the healing process with the help of golden retrievers and palamino horses at an animal therapy retreat. In the safety of the forest, the children’s memories of being illegally deported to Russia and their families’ struggles to rescue them are unraveled with the help of skilled and sensitive counsellors. The joy and humour the children discover during their time in the forest make it easy to forget that their stories are the reason the International Criminal Court recently issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin. Nearly 20,000 abducted children remain in Russian institutions.

0.0

A Good Year

Dec 29, 2020

A year ago, on 29 December 2019, prisoners were exchanged with the self-proclaimed ‘LPR’ and ‘DPR’. Among the Ukrainians who returned home were journalist Stanislav Aseyev, tanker Bohdan Pantiushenko, and human rights activist Andriy Yarovoi. Four months earlier, on 7 September, Crimeans Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko were released from Russian colonies. We spoke to the former prisoners about their first year of freedom.

5.5

Superpower

Feb 17, 2023

Sean Penn and Aaron Kaufman’s documentary, shot just before and after Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022, and featuring several interviews with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

0.0

War Tails

Jun 30, 2024

The Russian invasion of Ukraine created an avalanche of abandoned dogs and cats that are now multiplying causing unforeseen consequences.

0.0

Osteuropa zwischen Hitler und Stalin - Das große Sterben

Jun 10, 2025

Between 1930 and 1945, Eastern Europe experienced mass violence on an unprecedented scale. Hitler and Stalin exploited the vast region for their respective expansionist plans. It is estimated that around 14 million civilians were murdered—primarily Jews, Poles, Balts, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.

0.0

Fugue

Jun 5, 2023

A man hikes through late-winter woods. Russia invades Ukraine. It’s difficult to reconcile the scales of action described by those sentences, but this difficulty is what John Gianvito dwells on in his new video. It may simply be that this is a diary, movingly plain and provisional in construction, which recounts what its author did for a few months last year: he watched a war on the internet and went outside. Even if that’s true, such a description makes Gianvito’s images seem less strange than they are

7.0

The Football Nation

Oct 27, 2022

The documentary tells about the birth, history of formation and development of the National Football Team of Ukraine in the period from 1992 to 2022.

10.0

The Making of Basement 626

Jun 5, 2025

In January 2025, experimental jazz duo Myshko Birchenko and Yevhen Puhachov, members of Hyphen Dash, travelled to Kramatorsk without any pre-made drafts or demo recordings to use music as a vessel to capture the emotions present in a place on the edge of a battle for survival and explore the therapeutic nature of music and improvisation in the brutal reality of war. They packed all the equipment into a car, drove 700 kilometres from Kyiv to the frontline city Kramatorsk, and turned one of many basements which serve as shelters into a makeshift recording studio. As a result, they recorded over 300 minutes of music, which were eventually distilled into a 90-minute album.

6.9

A House Made of Splinters

Mar 9, 2023

A temporary house for abandoned children near the front line in eastern Ukraine is run by a small group of social workers determined to provide comfort and safety. It may be humble and somewhat run-down, but this house is filled with love and offers up to nine months of refuge to kids whose fate will be determined by the system. During this short time, the caretakers try to nurture within them a sense of stability and normalcy.

0.0

Stronger than Arms

Jul 10, 2014

"Stronger than Arms", is the history that heats our hearts up with the memory of events and people, who from the time of Euromaidan to the war in the East were building a new Ukraine.

8.0

War Note

Aug 24, 2021

Personal videos from the phones, camcorders, cameras and GoPros of Ukrainian soldiers are woven into a surreal journey to the frontline of the war with Russia. The film shows a bizarre world whose laws are quite different from what we are used to. The behaviour is different, the relationships unfold differently and the humour takes on different notes. The heroes wake up and fall asleep, rejoice and cry, always feeling that the recording may end at any moment.

9.0

Hell Jumper

Jul 9, 2024

Courage, love and loss. Young people risk their lives with self-funded missions to rescue families in Ukraine’s frontline towns. Told through their own words and unique first-person footage.

0.0

Good evening, we're from Barcelona

Dec 3, 2023

Film made by activists who lived for a month in the Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona after the start of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

0.0

Dear Beautiful Beloved

Feb 7, 2025

While the armed conflicts on the Ukrainian front have become a traumatizing everyday reality, out of necessity new structures of care have developed among Ukrainian society. As a contemporary document, this film looks at unseen moments of care work - continuous attempts to restore respect and security to people who have been violently deprived of them.

6.4

Change My Mind

Aug 21, 2025

The story of three Czechs who doubted the reality of the war in Ukraine. Together with the film crew, they went from Prague to Kharkiv, and then to the Donbas. The Czechs were under fire, saw the wounded, mass graves and underground schools.

7.3

Zelensky, The Story

Mar 9, 2022

Portrait of Volodymyr Zelensky: his beginnings as a comedian, his phenomenon series "State Servant", his ultra spectacular campaign, his election, his rivalry with Vladimir Putin... and his new status as the most admired leader in the world.

5.0

Two Men at War

Nov 11, 2022

As the war between Russia and Ukraine rages, this George Stephanopoulos documentary pulls back the curtain on the rise of the two men at the center of the conflict – Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.