Josh Imhof | staff writer

As snowflakes dusted the streets, film enthusiasts from Pittsburgh and abroad stepped out of the cold and into the warmth of the cinema for the 2025 European Union Film Festival. Hosted by the University of Pittsburgh, the festival began on Jan. 17 and featured 10 movies, ranging from sci-fi dramas to slice-of-life documentaries.

The films were mainly screened at the Harris Theater Downtown, with a limited number of screenings taking place on Pitt’s campus in Oakland.

This year’s festival debuted themes of climate response and environmental hope, according to organizer Dr. Randall Halle, director of the Department of European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh.

“The idea was to have something about sustainability [and] resilience in a very broad way, not just a very narrow vision of ‘there’s heating up and the X is dying out,’” Halle said. “It was a difficult selection process.”

Halle annually attends the Berlin Film Festival, where he will see up to six films a day, many of them made by European filmmakers. It is this experience that inspired him to begin his work of “bringing films from the heart of Europe to America’s Heartland.”

The films come from all across the continent, including Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands and Ukraine.

One of these films, “Flowers of Ukraine,” follows the lived experience of Nataliia Yurchenko, a woman living in the Ukranian capital of Kyiv who is trying to protect her land from being redeveloped. The film takes on new meaning when the 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of the country begins.

Director Adelina Borets and Producer Glib Lukianets made the 24-hour journey from Kyiv to participate in a Q&A about the film on Wednesday at the Harris Theater.

“Every filmmaker in Ukraine right now is trying to speak on the same topic: How the war changed us, but in absolutely different ways,” Borets told The Duke. “I’m really surprised, and I’m proud of that, because a lot of great films are [being made] right now.”

Rather than focusing on the war itself, Borets wanted to focus on something smaller and more intimate with the war as a backdrop. The two remained intertwined though, as Yurchenko’s story became a metaphor for the bigger picture.

These deeper meanings were also seen in other films, including the 2023 German film “Afire.” Throughout the entirety of the film, viewers follow the story of a man trying to finish his novel during his vacation, where a raging forest fire burns in the background.

Audiences witness his self-hatred affect his relationships, until it finally consumes them, much like the fire consumes the forest.

Halle encouraged attendees to stay after the films ended to further discuss these deeper meanings and ask questions about them.

Oftentimes, European films will have unresolved endings that leave questions unanswered and the meaning of the work as a whole open to interpretation. Halle said this is different from something like a Marvel movie, which he believes is driven by questions of what will happen to the characters next time rather than deeper, thematic ones posed by realistic scenarios.

“That aspect of it being realistic was really important,” he said. “I think one of the problems that we have is that a great deal of our imagination that’s being presented through Hollywood and through other venues is of climate apocalypse. Neither of those things are satisfying to me.”

Cezar Pawlowski, a current student at University of Pittsburgh and former Polish documentary filmmaker, agreed.

“To see a European movie is a journey into a different planet as far as cinema is concerned,” he said. “It’s a breath of fresh air.”

Pawlowski feels that American films rely too much on famous people and happy endings to garner an audience. Instead, he believes films from Europe take a more “subtle” and “poetic” approach, leaving room for ambiguity.

Other viewers, like Rebecca Farabaugh and her son Joseph Weber, were appreciative of the festival’s smaller scale.

“It’s unique. Whenever you go [to the movies], it’s big budget things,” Weber said. “It’s interesting to see something rare or one of a kind. It feels special.”

Pittsburghers still have time to catch the last day of the festival, which wraps up tonight. The Harris Theater will be showing “Journey to Utopia” at 5:30 p.m. and Poland’s “Next to Nothing” at 7:30 p.m. Across Forbes Avenue in Oakland, Pitt will be screening the Estonian “Feathers of Glamour” at 6 p.m. followed by “Flowers of Ukraine,” after which Borets and Lukianets will be holding another Q&A.