Taking Ukrainian Stories Abroad Through International Co-Productions

Ukraine's screen industry has been working under extraordinary conditions since February 2022, yet its producers continue travelling to markets like Cannes, Berlin, and content showcases across the Asia-Pacific to share new drama and documentary projects. For an Australian audience curious about how stories born in wartime reach screens from Sydney to Singapore, the process of pitching those projects reveals much about resilience, business pragmatism, and the search for genuine collaboration partners.

In a recent conversation with a producer behind several Ukrainian drama and documentary projects, the focus turned to what it actually takes to present unfinished stories to buyers from very different media landscapes. Australia's mix of public broadcasters, subscription streaming services, and a regulated local content framework creates particular openings for foreign-language drama, especially when projects carry themes that resonate with viewers who follow news from Eastern Europe closely.

What the first pitch call actually looks like

Most Ukrainian producers will admit that the first conversation with a potential international partner is rarely about creative vision at the start. It tends to begin with logistics: where the project stands in development, what financing has already been secured, whether key talent is attached, and which territories remain available. A producer pitching from Kyiv or Lviv today often does so from a hotel room in Cannes or a co-working space in Singapore, because the war has made long planning horizons impossible.

The producer described flying into a market event with a tightly edited pitch deck, a five-minute sizzle reel, and a list of conversations already half-booked through agents and sales executives. When that first call happens over video rather than in person, the pressure to be concise intensifies. Buyers in markets like Australia are juggling multiple meetings across time zones, and producers have learned to lead with the cultural specificity that gives a project its edge rather than softening it for broader appeal.

What struck me most during the conversation was the producer's insistence that vulnerability, used carefully, can be a strength in a pitch. Acknowledging that a project was developed during blackouts, or that a director moved between safe locations to shoot, signals something honest about the team. Buyers from public broadcasters in particular respond to that authenticity, especially when they understand what it cost to keep production moving.

How Australian buyers and Screen Australia read a Ukrainian project

Australian screen businesses operate within a fairly clear regulatory landscape. Screen Australia administers the main financing incentives, and the country's location and production incentives shape where international shoots choose to base themselves. Foreign producers often underestimate how much local infrastructure, talent, and post-production capacity exist between Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide, and how seriously Australian agencies treat international partnership proposals.

For a Ukrainian producer, the relevant conversations tend to involve SBS, which has long committed to multilingual and multicultural programming, and ABC Television, which carries local content quotas and occasionally commissions documentary strands reflecting Australia's place in the world. The producer mentioned spending time during a recent Sydney visit explaining how a Ukrainian documentary series would slot into SBS commissioning patterns, or whether it could fit alongside strands on NITV that explore First Nations and diaspora storytelling. Each broadcaster has its own editorial priorities, and the pitch has to flex accordingly.

Screen Australia's co-production programs also matter in these discussions. Ukraine and Australia do not currently have a bilateral co-production treaty, which changes the way financing structures need to be built. That absence pushes Ukrainian teams toward minority co-production arrangements or straight licence deals, sometimes routed through European partners who already have an Australian distribution footprint. Producers learn quickly that pointing this out early saves later confusion.

Documentary projects travel differently from drama

Drama pitches and documentary pitches may look similar at first glance, but the producer was clear that buyer expectations diverge sharply once the discussion moves past genre. Documentaries lean on access, testimony, and a point of view. War-related documentaries from Ukraine come with built-in urgency, but the international market has grown more discerning over the past three years, with buyers checking carefully whether a project offers a unique angle or whether it merely rehashes familiar footage.

The producer spoke about a recent pitch for a documentary series following civilian volunteers along evacuation corridors. The hook for Australian partners was less the conflict itself and more the human logistics of moving families, animals, and medical supplies across regions that had been considered safe only months earlier. That framing attracted interest from a Sydney-based production company that had previously worked on transport and infrastructure documentaries and saw an angle that could engage viewers outside the usual news audience.

Drama projects, by contrast, require a fuller packaging conversation. Cast attachments matter. So does the script. International buyers from Australian streaming services have begun asking tougher questions about episode ordering, episode counts in the eight-to-ten range, and whether the story can sustain a second season if it performs. These structural questions are part of every pitch now, and they shape how a project is shaped long before cameras roll.

Streaming platforms and the long game of wartime production

Streaming has changed the rhythm of international pitching more than any other shift in the past decade. The producer pointed out that a Ukrainian drama series that might once have waited two years to find a home now has multiple paths to market: direct commissions from European platforms, sales through North American aggregators, or niche deals with public broadcasters outside the usual commercial loop. Australia's Stan has acquired non-English drama before, and Foxtel has a long track record with European thrillers and historical miniseries that travel well.

The catch is volume. Hundreds of projects are pitched every quarter, and war-related themes risk being folded into a category that buyers will quietly set aside once supply saturates. Ukrainian producers are responding by diversifying the kinds of stories they pitch. Not every drama has to be about the war. Costume pieces, legal thrillers, romantic comedies set in contemporary Kyiv, even supernatural folkloric series adapted from twentieth-century literature are all on the table. That breadth keeps the creative sector alive and spreads attention across more buyers around the world.

The producer also emphasised that pitching is now an ongoing conversation, not a single event. Relationships built at one market carry into the next, and many of the most interesting co-production possibilities emerge from a follow-up email months after a first meeting, often after the buyer has tracked how the project has progressed through development. Time zones between Kyiv, Sydney, and Los Angeles make the rhythm slower than anyone would like, but persistence tends to win out.

Keeping creative jobs alive by selling stories

Beyond the commercial mechanics lies a more fundamental motivation. Ukrainian producers frame every international pitch as a way of keeping teams, crews, and writers employed during a period when domestic commissioning has shrunk. Each licence deal or co-production arrangement funds another stretch of pre-production, another month of writers' rooms in safer Ukrainian cities, another training opportunity for emerging producers who might otherwise have left the industry for less stable work.

The producer described visiting a Ukrainian production office that had moved twice in eighteen months, first from Kharkiv to Lviv, and later to a quieter western town after infrastructure concerns grew. Watching that team pitch a completed drama series to buyers in Melbourne, then fly home and keep working, gave the conversation a particular weight. International partnerships are not just commercial arrangements; they are part of how a creative workforce stays intact when much else has fallen away.

Australia's screen sector understands this kind of pressure better than many. Local producers who navigated bushfire and pandemic-era disruptions have spoken publicly about how international partnerships helped sustain their businesses, and Ukrainian teams find common ground in those conversations more quickly than they might expect. That shared understanding tends to surface in unexpected places during pitches, often over coffee before a formal meeting begins.

Ukraine Content Club brings together leading Ukrainian media companies to showcase drama and documentary projects to international buyers, and serves as a useful entry point for producers, distributors, and broadcasters interested in the breadth of Ukrainian work currently in development. The platform hosts pitch lineups, expert collaborations, and industry updates that help international partners navigate what is, by any measure, an unusually active production sector. For readers curious about how one of those companies is approaching the challenge of keeping creative work alive during wartime, this overview of 1+1 Media's recent slate offers a useful window into the kinds of projects finding international partners right now. Anyone interested in exploring Ukrainian content for the Australian market, or simply wanting to follow upcoming pitches and market activity year-round, can start at the Ukraine Content Club website and follow its updates through the next market cycle.