Festival internazionale Segni della Notte - Urbino
International Festival Signs of the Night - Urbino





10° Festival internazionale Segni della Notte - Urbino - April 13 - 19, 2026

24th International Festival Signs of the Night - Italy

9


MAIN AWARD

Russians at War

Anastasia Trofimova
Canada, France / 2024 / 2:09:00

Anastasia Trofimova, a Russian-Canadian filmmaker, gains unprecedented access to follow a Russian Army battalion in Ukraine. Without any official clearance or permits, she earns the trust of foot soldiers and embeds herself over the span of a year with one battalion as it makes its way across Eastern Ukraine. What she discovers is far from the propaganda and labels pushed by the East or the West: an army in disarray, soldiers disillusioned and often struggling to understand what they are fighting for.


 

 



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JURY DECLARATION

For its ability to tell the story of war from the inside, vividly and rawly portraying the soldiers' arrogance, but also their fears and doubts. A documentary that is both an essay (historical and cinematic) and a memoir, in which the author provides a dry account of another dirty conflict.


SIGNS AWARD

The Signs Award for Documentary honours films, which express in a surprising and sensitive way the perturbing aspects of reality


Flowers of Ukraine

Adelina Borets
Poland / Ukraine / 2024/ 1:10:00

An humorous anarchist woman fights to protect her land from developers. Her struggle intensifies with the onset of war, but she continues to laugh, using humor as her last weapon to stay free. Set in the middle of the cement jungle of Kyiv – usually referred to as "sleeping quarters” – we dive into an unexpected oasis of flowers and nature. The locals refer to it as a mini-farm or simply a messy pit. That is where we find the main character of our film, the 67-year-old Natalia, who is the rebel of the neighborhood, the last one refusing to sell her land. She is full of life and infectious energy, always armed with a sense of humor – her strongest shield.

Despite that the place resembles a shelter for homeless people, Natalia sees it as her paradise on earth. An oasis of peace, independence, and freedom. And no one – not even her own children, who are scattered around the world – can persuade her to move anywhere else. For the last 50 years, Kyiv's developers were unable to get rid of Natalia and her ecosystem, thanks to the grateful people who live there with her – a pair of refugees from Luhansk, a former and current husband, and a granddaughter. When the worst day in Ukrainian history began, on February 24th, 2022, Natalia's fight for her tiny plot of land only gains momentum and quickly expands way beyond its borders. Unlike many others, she decides to stay and to do everything in her power to help liberate Kyiv.

This time she embarks on a much larger fight for the homeland she loves. By nailing Putin to the walls, making Molotov cocktails and keeping up her good spirit by joking all the time – she heads for victory. Natalia always fights with a smile and comes out on top. Kyiv developers stopped pressuring her during the military events. In some ways, Natalia found her own peace in the midst of the war. She realizes that she cannot live calmly. Everyone is changing as a result of the war. Natalia is no different. One the one hand, she engages in rebuilding the city, on the other she starts to think about death. One of her husbands died. Even her goat died. She will die here and no one can take it away from her. This is what she means by freedom
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ITALIAN PREMIERE

 

 

JURY DECLARATION

A seed of hope for the people through a debut work that aims to be a message of peace conveyed by a resilient elderly woman who carries on her passion and civic pride. But she also stubbornly fights against the speculative gentrification that is erasing the country's original history.





NIGHT AWARD

The Night Award for Documentary honours films, which represent reality in an ambivalent and enigmatic way, avoiding stereotypes of representation and simple conclusions


Invisible Countdown

Amir Ovadia Steklov
Germany 2024 / 0:13:59

Are Jewish people in Germany allowed to take a critical view of the war in Gaza? Or do they feel obliged to show solidarity with Israel? A/ mir wonders how he is perceived here as a peace-loving Jew. Infrared images offer the aesthetics of reversal. The invisible becomes visible, the visible alien. Noise-cancelling headphones momentarily silence the outside in favour of the inside. In the picture: the countdown from 24 to zero frames per second.

 

 

JURY DECLARATION

The bloody conflict between Israel and Palestine is told through the introspective reflection of young Amir, a non-Zionist Jew living in Germany. This personal account is told—off-screen—with a subtractive countdown and the use of infrared—not visible to the human eye—to symbolize how difficult it is for a Jew to express his opinions publicly.