U Are the Universe

Pavlo Ostrikov's U Are the Universe (Ukrainian: Ти, космос) won the Silver Méliès for Best European Fantastic Film at the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation (Strasbourg) 2024 and the Asteroid Award at the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival 2024. It is one of the strongest Ukrainian-language features of the war years, and the first Ukrainian science-fiction feature to win significant international festival recognition.

It is Ostrikov's debut feature, and he wrote the screenplay himself. The film is a Ukrainian-Belgian co-production, made with substantial support from the Ukrainian State Film Agency despite wartime conditions. Ostrikov shot it in Kyiv across approximately ninety days of production through 2023, with air-raid alerts interrupting the work, and the visual effects were completed at Belgian and Polish post-production houses outside Ukraine.

Volodymyr Kravchuk plays the central male role, and Daria Plakhtii makes a breakthrough screen debut in the female lead. The effects work, particularly the spacecraft interior, the surface-of-Jupiter sequences and the unusual atmospheric treatment of the central radio-contact dialogue, is the most accomplished science-fiction effects work yet seen in a Ukrainian feature. The film opened in Ukrainian cinemas in December 2024 and grossed over a million dollars at the domestic box office. Its festival run extended through 2025, with prizes at Cottbus and Strasbourg, and Drafthouse Films acquired it for theatrical and streaming release in the U.S. market.