25/03/2025 - The Ukrainian-born, Netherlands-based director and producer, whose recent documentary Nice Ladies keeps on travelling through the world, discusses her approach to filmmaking

Mariia Ponomarova is a Ukrainian film director & creative producer based in the Netherlands. She studied at Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema & Television and the Netherlands Film Academy. Mariia's fiction and documentary films were selected at DokLeipzig, IDFA, Sarajevo FF, NFF, Sheffield DocFest and more, including her feature documentary Nice Ladies [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] having its International premiere at HotDocs in 2024. Mariia is a member of the European Film Academy and a Senior Consultant at DAE. An interview with her, now selected for the 2025 Emerging Producers programme (read her EP profile here).

Why do you produce documentaries? Do you see documentary cinema as an instrument of social and political change?
Mariia Ponomarova: I produce documentaries to continue making sense of the world around and within us.
Calling it an instrument would be a stretch, but I mostly see it as an invitation to embark on the journey of (re)discovery. For me, it's about giving a spotlight to valid and multilayered experiences of people, who live and breathe at the same time as us while struggling with systemic injustices, the outcomes of long-standing politics and trying to face all the imperfections of our existence.

How do you achieve and maintain work-life balance and foster overall well-being?
I try to listen to my family, friends and loved ones when they remind me that I'm not limitless. I also try to remind myself, that even though I'm rather impatient and love stacking my projects one after another – some things take time. And my well-being would benefit from better pacing of certain processes, maintaining good boundaries and getting enough rest when needed. Funnily enough, recently I found out that I'm lactose-intolerant and have other new dietary constraints. It was an interesting revelation: all of a sudden I had to spend way more time at the grocery store and, in general, would have to majorly reconsider my diet and habits, which takes as much time as if I would be producing a whole new film project. In addition, we have to denormalise workaholism and challenge unhealthy work structures that would push people into it. Because even though we are all very dedicated people in this industry and film production realities are, at times, merciless, at the end of the day we are human beings and not 'human doings'.

Where do you find audiences for your films?
Everywhere, where people can echo the pain points of our characters. Everywhere, where the subject matter can resonate with the need to speak up about it and face the complexity. This might not be the widest audience, but it's usually the audience that knows that empathy is the key to not getting numb and detached in our day and time. On the practical side, the feature documentary Fragile Memory [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Igor Ivanko
film profile] that I've produced will have its cinema release in Ukraine this month and it's performing well on multiple VOD platforms (DAfilms, TrueStory) while being available on Amazon for the UK and the US.

What projects do you have underway?
I'm currently focusing on the hybrid short film Patronymic that I'm working on as a director and executive producer, while Noortje Wilschut from Family Affair Films is taking the lead as the delegate producer. I pitched this project at Shorts'n'Sweet DokLeipzig Pitch in 2022 and after a successful development period, this winter we received production funding for it from the Netherlands Film Fund and planning to finish its financing soon to shoot in the second half of 2025.

Additionally, my feature documentary Nice Ladies keeps on travelling the world, I'm also consulting on a couple of projects of my peers and thinking about testing grounds in the Documentary VR scene.

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EMERGING PRODUCERS is a leading promotional and educational project, which brings together talented European documentary film producers. The programme is organised and curated by the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival.

Deadline for applications to the EMERGING PRODUCERS 2026 edition is 31 March 2025.