Ukraine’s “Silent Flood” Stuns IDFA With Haunting Vision of Faith, War, and Nature

Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s documentary Silent Flood has won the IDFA Award for Best Cinematography, one of the highest honors at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA)—the world’s biggest documentary film festival.

The film premiered on November 16 in IDFA’s main competition, where only 12 documentaries were selected from around the world.

Filmed by four cinematographers—Ivan Morarash, Oleksandr Korotun, Vyacheslav Tsvietkov, and Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk—the documentary explores a remote religious community living on the banks of the Dniester River in Ukraine. Without electricity and surrounded by nature, the group endures regular floods and, eventually, the full-scale war.

The jury praised the film’s visual cohesion and emotional depth: “Each frame is like a painting. In a country long shaped by war, the film shows a pacifist community whose world feels timeless and fragile. Despite being filmed by four people, it remains visually unified and deeply moving.”

Silent Flood received strong praise from international critics. Screen Daily described it as “a lyrical portrait that approaches war with delicacy, through light, fog, and atmosphere.” Variety called it “visually poetic and remarkably cohesive.” The International Documentary Association (IDA) highlighted its “rare observational purity.”

In one scene, the community sends handmade bread to Ukrainian soldiers—quietly connecting their peaceful lives to the front lines.

“This film began with one sentence—about a religious commune in western Ukraine,” said producer Karina Kostyna. “Now, after five years of work, we’re premiering at IDFA and taking home a cinematography award.”

In his acceptance speech, Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk spoke of the war’s scale and toll: “This film is about scale—time, landscape, and now resistance. In 2022, Russia launched 1,100 drones at Ukraine. In 2024—over 10,000. This year—almost 50,000. Many of the places you saw in the film are already under occupation.”

Silent Flood is a TABOR production, co-produced with Elemag Pictures, MDR, and ARTE. It was made in collaboration with over a dozen European and Ukrainian partners, including Netflix, Docudays UA, Goethe-Institut, the Ukrainian Institute, and Eurimages.

Earlier this year, Militantropos—a documentary by Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova, and Simon Mozgovyi—was shortlisted for the European Film Award. Premiering at Cannes, the film explores how war transforms lives across Ukraine through a shared human lens.

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