PITTSBURGH — Bohdan Czmola kicked off the Ukrainian Film Festival on Saturday night with a topical opener: “Has anybody been watching the news this week?”

After years of being largely overlooked in America, Ukraine, the country of Mr. Czmola’s parents, was suddenly in the middle of a blockbuster news story in the United States. It has been in more headlines in the space of a few days than Mr. Czmola remembers in all of his 68 years.

“Ukraine,” Mr. Czmola declared, like a proud father, to the 30 or so people in the auditorium, “is the hot topic of discussion.”

Most of the time, all that Americans typically know about Ukraine is — maybe — the food and music, lamented Mr. Czmola and others, sitting in the auditorium before the first film of the night. Some might have paid a little attention during the recent revolutions, or were aware that a war is going on in eastern Ukraine in which 13,000 people have been killed. The crowd bristled that people still seemed to associate Ukraine with tsarist pogroms, pointing out that its voters had recently elected a Jewish comedian as president.