Dr. Yuliia Kovalenko is a film critic, PhD in cultural Studies and program director at Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.
Yuliia is a member of the selection team of Berlinale Forum, member of Ukrainian Film Critics Union and National Union of Journalists.
In 2017, she defended her PhD thesis and received a PhD degree in Cultural Studies (Phenomenon of reality in postmodern culture: paradoxes of distancing. Kovalenko, Yuliia. – Theory and History of Culture. – Odesa National Polytechnic University. – National Academy of Managerial Staff of Culture and Arts, Kyiv, 2017). Yuliia has been working as a lecturer at the universities of Odesa, teaching theory and history of culture.
From 2015 to 2017 she was a programmer at the independent movie theatre ‘Inotheatre’ in Odesa, where she held the special program of Ukrainian art cinema ‘We Are Here’, and as a program director run the 1st International Children Film Festival ‘Next’.
As a film critic, she has publications in Ukrainian and international journals (Kino Raksti, Korydor, La Furia Umana, etc.) and runs her blog about cinema Kinotabs.com Between 2016 and 2018 she was a co-editor of Cineticle Magazine devoted to art cinema. Starting from 2017 Yuliia was also an editor and then editor-in-chief of the Festival guide, Catalogue and other printed materials for the Docudays UA IHRDFF.
In 2019, she joined the program department at Docudays UA, where she has been curating the DOCU/ART non-competitive program and other special programs, and the DOCU/CLASS section of master classes and workshops. In 2023 she became a program director at Docudays UA.
In 2022, she co-curated the program of Ukrainian cinema “Perspectives of Ukrainian Cinema” for Deutsche Kinemathek. As a programmer and program director of Docudays UA has been curating various programs of Ukrainian documentary cinema for international projects and foreign film festivals, events, institutions, including the exchange program with Taiwan International Documentary Festival in 2024.