Ideas of man and beast wrestle with one another in Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s unsettling debut. He draws on the pagan mask-wearing traditions of the preparation for the Ukranian Malanka carnival to heighten the primal imagery of his tale of a family man who becomes increasingly desperate.
Leonid (played with bruising heft by Oleksandr Yatsentyuk) has just returned home after a long stint working abroad. Locals know him best by the nickname Pamfir, which was garnered in a youth of smuggling - although that is all theoretically in the past now thanks to a promise he made to his wife Olena (Solomiia Kyrylova). The setting may be rural but the rules here are far from pastoral. Despite the earthy warmth of the general colour scheme, mist swirls about the place and there’s a strong undercurrent of violence, even in the film’s moments of humour.
Pamfir’s son Nazar (Stanislav Potiak) is now a.
Leonid (played with bruising heft by Oleksandr Yatsentyuk) has just returned home after a long stint working abroad. Locals know him best by the nickname Pamfir, which was garnered in a youth of smuggling - although that is all theoretically in the past now thanks to a promise he made to his wife Olena (Solomiia Kyrylova). The setting may be rural but the rules here are far from pastoral. Despite the earthy warmth of the general colour scheme, mist swirls about the place and there’s a strong undercurrent of violence, even in the film’s moments of humour.
Pamfir’s son Nazar (Stanislav Potiak) is now a.
- 5/4/2023
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Violent story of a man’s doomed efforts to settle back into family life after a shady trip abroad is dynamic but despairing
This movie from western Ukraine is one of the strangest and fiercest I have seen in a while: dynamic and yet despairing. It does not allude to Russia’s war on Ukraine, but perhaps that conflict is there subtextually, in the sense of tribal loyalty, community tradition and the distinct, almost occult pull towards the west. There is something of Aleksey German or Sergey Loznitsa here, and its lead character is like a more watchful and subdued, though no less violent, version of someone that Emir Kusturica would dream up.
The setting is Bukovina, in the eastern Carpathian mountains bordering Romania. Oleksandr Yatsentyuk plays Leonid, nicknamed Pamfir (“Stone”), a guy who has just come home from a job in Poland; he makes passionate love to his wife...
This movie from western Ukraine is one of the strangest and fiercest I have seen in a while: dynamic and yet despairing. It does not allude to Russia’s war on Ukraine, but perhaps that conflict is there subtextually, in the sense of tribal loyalty, community tradition and the distinct, almost occult pull towards the west. There is something of Aleksey German or Sergey Loznitsa here, and its lead character is like a more watchful and subdued, though no less violent, version of someone that Emir Kusturica would dream up.
The setting is Bukovina, in the eastern Carpathian mountains bordering Romania. Oleksandr Yatsentyuk plays Leonid, nicknamed Pamfir (“Stone”), a guy who has just come home from a job in Poland; he makes passionate love to his wife...
- 5/3/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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