Baby Boxes, a melodrama series, is dedicated to the complicated issue of abandoned infants. It is a film about salvation and kindness, human vices and a huge will to live; it tells stories about choices and describes an opportunity to become a whole world for someone. 

Each episode of the series is a story about saving a newborn infant planted in the so-called baby box, a special box equipped in a maternity clinic or a children’s hospital for those who would like to get rid of the infant anonymously. Our characters are doctors and medical staff of the children’s hospital who take the foundlings on, treat them, surround with kindness and care. There are also parents worth this name – those who have come to a conscious decision to become a father or a mother to someone else’s child. Still, the baby remains the central character, because it is around him or her that all the events unfold.

Baby Boxes

A documentary featuring testimonies from people who remember the 1933 famine in Ukraine.

The Holodomor was a mass-scale, man-made famine organised in the Ukrainian SSR in 1932–1933 by the leadership of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the government of the USSR. Ukraine was the hardest hit, with millions of people dying of starvation. This famine has been recognised as genocide against the Ukrainian people. According to demographic estimates, the total number of victims of the Holodomor in the Ukrainian SSR is 3–7 million people. According to estimates by the M. Ptukha Institute of Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Ukraine’s demographic losses as a result of the Holodomor in 1932–1933 amount to approximately 4.5 million people, including 3.9 million due to excess mortality and a further 600,000 due to a birth deficit.

Students of Lviv State University Olya from Luhansk and Oksana from Odessa are best friends. In addition to the closeness of interests, they are united by the fact that they are both from rich families.

Girlfriends successfully pass the summer session, but do not want to return home and decide to stay on vacation in Lviv. After spending the evening in the club, they go home, but on the way with them begins to flirt with a drunken taxi passenger.

Girlfriends do not respond to rude attempts to meet. The next day, during a walk, Olya and Oksana are blocked by a recent taxi driver. He and his partner kidnap the girls in order to force them into prostitution. The captives are locked in a room of an unfamiliar apartment, but quickly find a way out, stunned with an iron the man left to guard. The students manage to avoid danger, but they are afraid that the kidnappers will appear again, so they decide to hire a bodyguard. We send them a specialized agency to Jarek Zhurkiewicz, a Polish professional working in Lviv.

The film recreates the events of the first days of the full-scale invasion and the battle for a strategically important city that has become a symbol of resistance.

In the film, eyewitnesses—civilians and military personnel—share their personal memories of the capture and liberation of Hostomel. Their accounts reveal the dramatic details of the Russian airborne assault, the fighting for the town, and the tragedy of the destruction of the legendary ‘Mriya’ aircraft.

The filmmakers also focus on the heroic feat of 18-year-old conscripts who were the first to engage in battle against the Russian Federation’s elite airborne troops and combat helicopters. This is the story of young men who stood up to defend their country in the early hours of the invasion and showed extraordinary courage. Their feat is part of the collective memory of Ukrainians, and it is important to speak out about it.

The film was produced in collaboration with the local community and veterans to reveal the truth about the events that marked a turning point for the whole country.