Meet Kseniia Opria, 2026 Razom ArtsLink Fellow
PUBLISHED: 10/03/26 | 🕑 5 mins
A filmmaker and curator from Zaporizhzhia, Kseniia Opria joins the ArtsLink Fellowships through a new partnership with Razom for Ukraine.
What does it mean to document daily life when daily life itself has become an act of resistance? That question sits at the heart of Kseniia Opria’s work, and it’s what makes her an especially fitting inaugural fellow in a new partnership between CEC ArtsLink and Razom for Ukraine.
Meet Kseniia Opria
Kseniia Opria is an editor, curator, and filmmaker based in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Her practice moves fluidly across documentary and experimental cinema, consistently drawn to the places where community life, institutional memory, and the realities of wartime converge. She works closely with independent media to document the everyday lives of local residents, people navigating ordinary and extraordinary circumstances at once.
She is currently completing her debut short documentary, The Right to Expression, a project whose title carries particular resonance in the current moment. Since 2025, she has also been co-curating PKHE! — an Experimental Film Workshop that operates as a non-commercial curatorial and research platform for artistic experimentation with moving images.
Alongside her own filmmaking, Kseniia leads the editorial work of NGO Docudays, one of Ukraine’s most significant institutions in the field of human rights documentary cinema. Docudays encompasses the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Docudays UA, a traveling festival reaching regions across the country, the Ukrainian War Archive, and a nationwide network of film clubs, a remarkable infrastructure for documentary culture built and maintained even as the country faces full-scale invasion.
In that context, her work on the 7th Edition of the Electronic Catalogue of Ukrainian Documentary Films (2023–2025) takes on added weight. The catalogue presents Ukrainian documentary cinema to global audiences and was published after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, positioning it as a tool not only of film history but of cultural diplomacy and professional exchange.
"I'm delighted to join a conversation that Ukrainian artists and cultural figures I admire from previous ArtsLink Fellowships have been developing for decades. Cinema is my medium, and I hope it can help us build bridges like this, preserve continuity, and speak about our overwhelming reality."
A New Partnership with Razom for Ukraine
This fellowship comes through a new partnership between CEC ArtsLink and Razom for Ukraine, a US-based nonprofit that has been a central force in mobilizing support for Ukraine across civic, cultural, and humanitarian dimensions since 2014. Razom’s cinema program has grown into a meaningful platform for connecting Ukrainian filmmakers with international audiences and collaborators — and the cinema Fellowship represents its next chapter.
“This year marks an important evolution for our cinema work — not just in launching new initiatives like the cinema Fellowship, but in building deeper relationships between filmmakers, audiences, and communities. These collaborations show how culture can move people, strengthen international dialogue, and create impact that extends far beyond the screen.”
The partnership reflects a shared conviction that culture plays an essential role in times of crisis, serving as resistance, documentation, and a vital source of connection. Kseniia’s work embodies this belief.
“We are honored to welcome Kseniia Opria as the inaugural 2026 Razom ArtsLink Fellow. At a time when Ukrainian artists are living through and documenting Russia's brutal war of aggression, we continue amplifying their voices across borders. Through our partnership with Razom for Ukraine, we are supporting Kseniia’s work and strengthening connections between Ukrainian filmmakers and global cultural networks.”
About ArtsLink International Fellowships
ArtsLink International Fellowships support pioneering artists, curators, and arts leaders from CEC ArtsLink’s network countries in developing their community-engaged practices and building creative relationships with US-based artists, organizations, and communities. The program is rooted in the value of independent artist networks and sustained dialogue around the pressing issues facing our societies.
Priority is given to artists and arts leaders whose work expands people’s awareness, understanding, and active participation in environmental and social justice issues. The program also gives additional attention to artists and arts leaders who have been displaced from their homes or forced into exile, regardless of where they are now living.
Through the fellowship, Kseniia will develop her practice and expand her professional network in the US and transnationally, bringing her perspective as a filmmaker and curator working in one of the world’s most urgent documentary contexts into new conversations, new collaborations, and new communities.
We warmly welcome Kseniia to the ArtsLink community, and to begin this collaboration with Razom for Ukraine.
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