'Ukrainian Queer Fighters for Freedom' und 'Rebel Queers: Ukraine’s Queer Resistance'
9. – 30. 9. 23

Angelika Ustymenko, Ukrainian Queer Fighters for Freedom (2022), 29:04 Min.

On 24 February 2022 at 6.31 am, my partner called me and said: “Please don’t panic, but they started bombing Kyiv.” At that moment, a new reality started. An existence full of horror and pain. The first documentary reports on the experiences of queer people during the ongoing war.

Angelika Ustymenko / Alex King, Rebel Queers: Ukraine’s Queer Resistance (2023), 15:17 Min.

Behind the subversive collective Rebel Queers stands the non-binary and neurodivergent artist and filmmaker Angelika Ustymenko. Before the full-scale Russian invasion, Rebel Queers would defy the heteronormative and patriarchal society that suffocated them by writing on house walls of Kyiv, among others: “Queer Sex”, “Make Queer Punk Again”, and “Be Queer. Do Crime. Hail Satan.” On the war's first anniversary, Ustymenko began a second documentary collaborating with Huck Docs to collect queer soldiers’ reflections and focus on other forms of queer resistance.

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Angelika Ustymenko is a non-binary neurodivergent queer artist and activist based in Kyiv, Ukraine. They are a part of Rebel Queers whose actions are aimed to honour queer people and realise their liberation.
In 2018, Angelika made their first short film that was shot on 16mm and premiered at Kyiv International Film Festival Molodist. After the full-scale invasion, they evacuated to Berlin and organised an exhibition featuring Ukrainian queer artists.
After coming back to Kyiv the spring of 2022, they made a documentary about Ukrainian queer people during the war “Ukrainian Queer Fighters For Freedom”. In 2023, Angelika released a new documentary “Rebel Queers: Ukraine's Queer Resistance” focusing on queer people in the Ukrainian army as well as a fiction short film “Before Curfew”. Both films were premiered at Sunny Bunny LGBTQIA+ Film Festival.

Alex King is Senior Editor at Huck Magazine in London. He writes and makes documentaries about humanitarian issues, activism and alternative culture. Formerly based in Athens, he wrote for international publications such as The Guardian, Dazed, Vice and Novara Media. He is creative producer with independent documentary collective Perfidious Productions and produced Athena Skates for Red Bull, Still, Moving for Nowness and the debut feature doc Tight: The Rise of Indian Bodybuilding is currently in post-prod.