We’re pleased to exclusively announce that KimStim has acquired all North American rights to Timestamp, the highly acclaimed documentary feature from Ukrainian filmmaker Kateryna Gornostai, director of the Berlinale Crystal Bear–winning Stop-Zemlia (2021).
The deal was negotiated between KimStim’s Co-President Ian Stimler and Martin Gondre of the Brussels-based sales company BFF and is produced by Olha Bregman & Natalia Libet of 2Brave Productions based in Kyiv. Kimstim plans to release the film theatrically across North America later this year.
Timestamp had its world premiere at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival, where it was heralded as one of the most urgent and deeply moving films in the lineup. While being work-in-progress, the film went on to win the Eurimages New Lab Outreach Award at CPH: DOX in March 2024. It had its US premiere at the prestigious New Directors/New Films hosted by The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center in April this year.
Further solidifying its impact, Timestamp was recently honored with two Golden Dzyga Awards from the Ukrainian Film Academy for Best Cinematography and Best Sound Design. In addition, producer Olha Bregman received a Presidential Award for Excellence in Ukrainian Film Production, personally presented by President Volodymyr Zelensky, recognizing her outstanding contributions to national cinema.
In this extraordinary portrait, Gornostai follows a group of Ukrainian schoolchildren as they navigate friendship, adolescence, and the disruptions of wartime. Her approach blends vérité intimacy with composed widescreen imagery, creating a film that is both emotionally resonant and visually striking. Rather than showing battlefronts, Timestamp reveals how war infiltrates daily life––in classrooms, playgrounds, and whispered conversations. It is a profoundly empathetic document of youth daunted but not defeated by history, offering a vision of resilience and fragile hope.
I said my Berlinale review, “Not a single image of warfare can be found in Ukrainian director Kateryna Gornostai’s Timestamp, but the irrevocable effect of Russia’s unjustified invasion of her country is felt in every expression and utterance, in the overwhelming destruction left behind. Shot between March 2023 and June 2024, this upsetting documentary observes the life-altering transformation of school-going for children, teenagers, and teachers in various parts of Ukraine. Cities are introduced based on how far they are from the frontlines of the war, with notations for those that have been completely demolished. Never focusing on one community too long, the cumulative effect is a patchwork of pain, perseverance, and adaptability as young innocence is forever lost, another rallying cry condemning the cruel futility of Putin’s maniacal warpath.”
See the exclusive trailer and poster below.
