Film

Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom

A Netflix-produced, ground-level chronicle of the 2013–14 Euromaidan uprising, built almost entirely from footage shot inside the tear gas, barricades and gunfire of Kyiv's Independence Square. There's little narration, just students, priests, medics and grandmothers turning a protest into a revolution in real time. Visceral, urgent, occasionally unbearable — essential viewing for understanding how Ukraine arrived where it is now.

TMDb rating7.9

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The Square2013

Jehane Noujaim embeds with Cairo's Tahrir Square activists through Egypt's revolution and its bitter aftermath — the same handheld urgency, the same question of what a revolution costs once the cameras leave.

But The despair compounds; unlike Maidan, this revolution keeps losing, and the film never softens that.

The Square poster

Navalny2022

A gripping, sometimes darkly funny thriller-doc about Alexei Navalny investigating his own poisoning — Ukraine's neighbour, same Kremlin, same stakes, told with real narrative propulsion.

But It's slicker and more constructed than Winter on Fire's raw immediacy — this one's been shaped into a story.

Navalny poster

Five Broken Cameras2011

A Palestinian farmer films five years of resistance to encroaching settlements, camera by camera, each one destroyed in the telling. Intimate where Winter on Fire is crowded, just as unflinching.

But It's slower and more personal — one man's village, not a nation's square — so the scale feels smaller.

Five Broken Cameras poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Слуга народа2015no page yet

Volodymyr Zelensky starred as a fictional accidental president fighting corruption in the years right after Maidan; life then repeated the joke and made him a real one, turning a comedy into an uncanny prophecy of the country Winter on Fire leaves behind.

A satirical sitcom about an ordinary schoolteacher who accidentally becomes president and tries to clean up a corrupt system — filmed in the same country, the same year, by the man who'd actually be elected president four years later.

But It's a broad, sometimes silly comedy in subtitles — tonally about as far from Winter on Fire's tear gas and barricades as you can get.

More like this (8)

For Sama2019

A young mother films five years of the siege of Aleppo, addressed to her infant daughter. Just as dangerous to have shot, with an even more devastating personal cost.

But It's harrowing in a different register — grief and love under siege, not the adrenaline of a square full of protesters.

For Sama poster

13th2016

Ava DuVernay traces a line from slavery to mass incarceration in America — a different fight, but the same interrogation of what a state will do to control its own people.

But It's an argument built from archive and interview, not eyewitness footage — cooler and more analytical than Winter on Fire's chaos.

13th poster

Collective2019

Romanian journalists uncover a healthcare cover-up that brings down a government — a slow-burn thriller about institutional rot and how ordinary people force accountability when officials won't give it.

But There's no crowd, no barricade — this is a quieter uprising, built on paperwork rather than Molotov cocktails.

Collective poster

Bringing Down a Dictator2002no page yet

The Bulldozer Revolution that toppled Milošević, told with the same street-level footage and the same portrait of ordinary citizens organising themselves into an unstoppable force.

But It's older and rougher-looking, and far less internationally known — you may need to hunt for a decent copy.

The Act of Killing2012

Indonesian death squad leaders re-enact their own massacres for the camera — an unbearable, essential film about what regimes do and what impunity looks like decades later.

But This is a much darker, more disturbing watch, with no uprising in sight — just the horror of what went unanswered.

The Act of Killing poster

Do Not Split2020no page yet

A tight, Oscar-nominated short following Hong Kong's 2019 protests from the front lines — same tear gas, same young faces, same question of how far a government will go.

But It's short and leaves you wanting more context — a snapshot rather than the fuller arc Winter on Fire gives you.

The Battle of Chile: Part I1975

Patricio Guzmán's crew filmed Allende's overthrow as it happened, cameras seized by soldiers mid-shoot — the same impulse to keep documenting a revolution while its outcome is still unknown, decades before digital cameras made Winter on Fire's immediacy possible.

Shot in grainy 16mm as Pinochet's coup unfolds in real time, this trilogy is the ancestor of every vérité protest documentary that followed — including this one.

But It's long, split into three parts, and black-and-white — a very different pace to Winter on Fire's breathless 98 minutes.

The Battle of Chile: Part I poster

Okkupert2015no page yet

Made the same year Maidan's aftermath was reshaping Ukraine's politics, this series turns the small nation's fear of a great power's encroachment into scripted drama — the same anxiety, played out as thriller instead of testimony.

A slick Norwegian thriller imagining a 'friendly' Russian occupation of Norway's oil fields — fiction dramatising the exact geopolitical nightmare that Winter on Fire's ending only gestures toward.

But It's speculative fiction with all the polish of a Nordic noir — no real footage, no real stakes, just a very well-made what-if.

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Navalny, For Sama, The Square, Collective, 20 Days in Mariupol