A journey through the history and imagination of Eastern Europe on the big screen
8-30 October 2026, Cinema ZED and Erasmushuis, KU Leuven

The Eastern European Film Weeks invites audiences to encounter the region through cinema. Across fourteen films – documentaries and fiction, classics and contemporary works – the programme offers glimpses into lives, places, and stories that illuminate the unfamiliar and challenge familiar perspectives. Each screening is accompanied by a conversation with filmmakers and scholars, providing context and insight into what unfolds on screen.

Festival highlights include Traces, a documentary about Ukrainian women who survived conflict-related sexual violence during Russia’s invasion; Courage, on the aftermath of the mass protests in Belarus; and Franz (in avant-première), in which Polish director Agnieszka Holland reimagines the life of Franz Kafka.

Discover the full program below:

Franz
8 October 2026, 19:45 – Opening night, ZED -Vesalius
Agnieszka Holland. Czech Republic / Poland / Germany / France, 2025. 127 min. Fiction (biographical drama).

A kaleidoscopic, genre-blurring biopic of Franz Kafka, following the writer from his childhood in Habsburg-era Prague to his final illness, weaving fact and fantasy to show how his life shaped his fiction.

Introduced by Huub van Baar, Professor of Politics at KU Leuven (LINES), specialising in European migration and minority politics.
Tickets are available on the website of Cinema ZED.

Tree of Violence
9 October 2026, 17:30, ZED – Vesalius
Anna Moiseenko. Belgium / Luxembourg, 2024. 81 min. Documentary (live-action and animation).

Combining live-action footage and animation, the film follows Russian graphic journalist Victoria Lomasko as she documents the connections between domestic and state-sponsored violence in Putin’s Russia — a portrait of an artist bearing witness up to the moment she has to leave the country after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

After the screening, Pieter Boulogne, Assistant Professor of Russian Literature at KU Leuven, will talk to artist Victoria Lomasko and film director Anna Moiseenko.

Tickets are available on the website of Cinema ZED.
Fancy trying your hand at drawing with Victoria Lomasko? Join her workshops The Power of Symbols and Talking Images, which will take place on the 9th and 10th October in Leuven.

Last Letters from my Grandma
14 October 2026, 18:30 – Justus Lupsiuszaal, Erasmushuis (118-04) , Blijde-Inkomststraat 21 , 3000 Leuven
Olga Lucovnicova. Belgium / Romania / Moldova / Netherlands, 2025. 94 min. Documentary.

Filmmaker Olga Lucovnicova travels with her father to a remote town in Russia’s Ural Mountains to uncover a long-buried family secret tied to her late grandmother — a journey suddenly overshadowed when Russia launches its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Introduced by Leen Engelen, film and media historian at LUCA school of arts. 
This screening is free. Register here.

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
18 October 2026, 19:30, ZED – Vesalius
Radu Jude. Romania / Luxembourg / France / Croatia, 2023. 163 min. Fiction (satire).

An overworked production assistant drives around Bucharest filming casting interviews with workers injured on the job for a corporate safety video, while by night she runs a foul-mouthed alter-ego on social media — a freewheeling, darkly comic diagnosis of contemporary Romania and the limits of the image itself.

Introduced by Jonas Vanderschueren, postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Arts at KU Leuven.
Tickets are available on the website of Cinema ZED.

Polish Short Films Programme
19 October 2026, 17:30, ZED – Vesalius
A selection curated by Iwona Pom (Fumi Studio).

Rain (Deszcz) — dir. Piotr Milczarek, 5′, 2019.
There Will Be No Other End (Innego końca nie będzie) — dir. Piotr Milczarek, 8′, 2024.
Horse Portrait (Portret konia) — dir. Witold Giersz, 6′, 2023.
Dear Leo Sokolosky (Drogi Leo Sokolosky) — dir. Weronika Szyma, 8′, 2024.
Nutcracker Girl (Dziewczynka do orzechów) — dir. Michalina Musialik, 14′, 2023.

Tickets are available on the website of Cinema ZED.

Traces
20 October 2026, 17:00, ZED – Vesalius
Alisa Kovalenko & Marysia Nikitiuk. Ukraine / Poland, 2026. 85 min. Documentary.

Six Ukrainian women who survived conflict-related sexual violence during Russia’s invasion come together to break the silence, transforming their testimonies into a collective act of resistance, solidarity, and healing.

Introduced by Ria Laenen, professor in Eastern European politics at KU Leuven.
Tickets are available on the website of Cinema ZED.

Antidote
22 October 2026, 15:00, ZED -Vesalius
26 October 2026, 17:00, ZED -Vesalius
James Jones. United States / United Kingdom, 2024. 89 min. Documentary.

Following investigative journalist Christo Grozev (Bellingcat), activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, and an anonymous whistleblower from inside Russia’s poison programme, the film reveals the human cost of exposing the Kremlin’s covert operations against dissidents — including the poisoning of Alexei Navalny.

Introduced by Peter Vermeersch, Professor of Political Science at KU Leuven.
Tickets are available on the website of Cinema ZED.

Kanal
25 October 2026, 17:00, ZED -Vesalius
Andrzej Wajda. Poland, 1957. 95 min. Fiction.

During the final days of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, a company of Home Army fighters retreats through the city’s sewers, fleeing Nazi encirclement. Trapped in the dark, suffocating tunnels, the group slowly unravels under exhaustion, fear, and lost hope. Drawing on screenwriter Jerzy Stefan Stawiński’s own experience surviving the sewers, Kanal was the first film made about the Uprising. It won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1957.

Introduced by Kris Van Heuckelom, professor of Polish and Cultural studies at KUL.
Tickets are available on the website of Cinema ZED.

Courage
30 October 2026, 19:30 — Closing night, ZED -Vesalius
Aliaksei Paluyan. Germany / Belarus, 2021. 90 min. Documentary.

Three actors from Minsk’s underground Belarus Free Theatre are swept into the 2020 mass protests against Alexander Lukashenko’s regime, risking arrest and violence in their fight for freedom of speech and democracy. Shot on the ground during the protests, the film offers a close, personal portrait of ordinary people’s courage under an authoritarian crackdown.

Introduced by Peter Vermeersch, Professor of Political Science at KU Leuven.
Tickets are available on the website of Cinema ZED.

The festival is organized by the KU Leuven Forum on Central and Eastern Europe in collaboration with Cinema ZED and with the support of the Polish Institute in Brussels and the Romanian Cultural Institute in Brussels.