Ukrainian

For her first feature, Oksana Karpovych adopts a prolific documentary sub-genre, the train film, to take the pulse of Ukraine, her native country.

Shot over summer and winter seasons on the elektrychka, a typical Soviet commuter train that travels between Kyiv and several small provincial towns, Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open invites us to share a ride with working-class, mostly marginalised passengers and vendors. Following a number of people and families from one grimy wagon to another, from station to station, we are immersed in their everyday struggles and learn about the dilemmas of building a new post-revolutionary identity. Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open is an atmospheric and intensely human vérité portrait of Ukrainian society on the move.Read More »

Synopsis:
It‘s Masha, Yana and Senia‘s last but one year of high school. Among the thriving pot plants in the classroom and to the sound effects of a Biology lesson about physical signs of stress, the young protagonists grapple with themselves and with one another. 16-year-old Masha is the quiet center of Kateryna Gornostai’s feature debut. Steering clear of both simplified narratives and overly simplistic psychology, the film depicts her as introverted, sensitive and in love with Sasha, another classmate whose aloofness and passivity she finds a perpetual challenge. When Masha is dancing alone in her room at night, high above the rooftops of a city somewhere in the Ukraine, nothing about it feels staged. Rather, it is an invocation of the moment, of genuine emotion – and of pain.Read More »

Four short stories are set along the roads of Donbass during the war. There are no safe spaces and no one can make sense of just what is going on. Even as they are trapped in the chaos, some manage to wield authority over others. But in this world, where tomorrow may never come, not everyone is defenceless and miserable. Even the most innocent victims may have their turn at taking charge.Read More »

A soldier suffering from PTSD befriends a young volunteer hoping to restore peaceful energy to a war-torn society.

13 wins & 11 nominations.Read More »

After the woman’s death, a quarrel breaks out between her three children over their shared apartment where they spent childhood. In the province, even a small amount of money is life-saving for people. The youngest son Pasha is against selling. He still lives here and in addition, he took care of his old mother. But both his brother and sister are convinced of the need to sell it. When relatives run out of arguments, they start doing horrible, and above all, irreversible things. After all, when there is money, even between relatives, people change.Read More »

With breathless pace, Hélène Chatelain (“the woman” in “La jetée”) reconstructs the life of Nestor Makhno from his writings, Soviet propaganda films, reactions of workers today and the memory he has left in the hearts & minds of his people in Gouliaïpolié, in the east of the Ukraine.Read More »

Ivan (1932)
Cinemapoem about building of Dniproges (Dnieper Hydroelectric Station), about the fate of rural fellow which comes together with other boys and girls to build one of most buildings of socialist industrial construction. Narrates the language of the poetic cinema of O. Dovzhenko about the process of alteration of consciousness of rural fellow due to industrialization.
Recipient of an award on ICF in Venice in 1934.Read More »

Quote:
The story is set in a small village during the German occupation of Ukraine. When one of the local partisans kills a German officer, the occupants vow to kill the whole village if the perpetrator is not found and delivered to them. What would your conscience tell you to do if the choice was between your own life and that of an entire village? Conscience is a striking combination of expressionistic, metaphorical images and dramaturgic realism, and the soundtrack darkens the mood. Due to the film’s themes, it did not see wide release until perestroika. Made by students of the directing-acting workshop of Vladimir Denisenko at the Kiev National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University, it was only allowed to be made because it was never to be screened. Nowadays, the film is considered a classic of Ukrainian cinema.Read More »

Quote:
THE LOST MASTERPIECE OF SOVIET CINEMA

Belye Tuchi – or as it should be called, Bili Khmary – is a movie that has somehow got lost and is now all but forgotten. The title is usually translated into English as White Clouds but it’s really closer to something like “the dark clouds are coming” but any translation will be miss the correct subtle meaning. The movie was directed by the Ukrainian Rollan Serhiienko, although IMDb mistakenly lists him as Sergiyenko. He was better known as a documentary film maker and later made the award winning Bell of Chernobyl. His career as a feature film director only produced two movies of which this is the best.Read More »