Five films to help better understand Ukraine

For the second year now, Ukraine, bravely resisting Russian aggression, has not left the front pages of the world Media. However, for many Europeans, this country is still "terra incognita", the former Soviet republic from the HBO series "Chernobyl". Our list will help readers significantly expand their understanding of modern Ukraine and Ukrainians, their culture, traditions and characters

Pamfir

(Director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, 2023)

The new Ukrainian cinema box-office hit is a family saga with elements of a criminal drama, a biblical parable and an ancient tragedy in the setting of Bukovyna Carpathians. The main character, Leonid, named Pamfir, an exemplary family man, after a long absence, returns home from Poland, where he worked hard for the future of his son Nazar. However, the desperate act of Nazar, who starts a fire in the prayer house in the hope of preventing his father's imminent departure, forces Pamfir to take up the old craft "for the last time" – to transfer contraband cargo across the Ukrainian-Romanian border. A simple work for an experienced smuggler turns into a series of irreparable consequences, dealing with which only brings a natural tragic ending closer. The fallen hero of the "stuck generation", Pamfir consciously makes all the sacrifices for the sake of his family's well-being, while he remains on the border of two worlds - decent civilized Europe and criminal Ukrainian borderlands.

Bad Roads

(Director Natalia Vorozhbyt, 2020)

Five short stories about the residents of Donbass, scattered by the war on different sides of the "demarcation line", will help the viewer emotionally feel what exactly has been happening in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk Regions since 2014, and understand why Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was inevitable. Each story is a complete plot about a clash of opposites: a captive and a separatist rapist, a high school girl, who is in love with Ukrainian soldier and her pro-Russian grandmother, a naive townswoman and a greedy family of farmers, Ukrainian officer at a checkpoint and a suspicious driver from the "other side", a soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the widow of a deceased blood brother. Masterful dramaturgy and dynamic staging carve suspense and tension out of the most innocuous episodes of the film, turning, for example, a comic story about a downed chicken into almost a household horror. At first glance, the disparate stories about the fatal crossroads of the Russian-Ukrainian war form into a whole author's statement, provocative and ruthless, about people and territories that "turned the wrong way", on those very bad roads.

Luxembourg, Luxembourg

(Director Antonio Lukich, 2023)

The tragicomic odyssey of two brothers who went from Lubny, Poltava province, to "city of millionaires" Luxembourg to see their father who is dying is the second full-length film of Ukrainian director Antonio Lukich ("My Thoughts Are Silent"), shot in the lyrical road movie genre. However, unlike the debut film, "Luxemburg" claims to be a big nationality (the main roles were played by non-professional actors Ramil and Amil Nasirov, musicians from the Ukrainian hip-hop group "Kurgan and Agregat") and autobiographical, since the plot collisions were taken by the director from his personal life. In the center of the plot are twin brothers Vasia and Kolia. Vasia is an honest but poor policeman, a loving father and a faithful husband. Kolia, by his definition, is "engaged in logistics", but actually works as a shuttle bus driver and a small drug dealer. The brothers don't get along very well, and in general they look like ice and flame to each other: reserved, kind Vasia and aggressive, impetuous Kolia. But they will have to get closer and try to understand each other when news about the imminent death of their runaway father, a native of Serbia, comes. In the course of the action, an authentic and rustic story about two hapless provincials turns into a quest about two halves of the same soul and a vain search for God.

Butterfly Vision

(Director Maksym Nakonechnyi, 2022)

An allegory of the Ukrainians' collective trauma, embodied in the image of the main character, a characteristic representative of the new "lost military generation". Aerial reconnaissance female soldier Lilia with the call name "Babochka" (Butterfly) during the next exchange returns from Russian captivity, carrying not only the pain and horror of the experience, but also an unexpected "gift" from her tormentors – while in captivity, Lilia was raped by a jailer and is pregnant now. At home, Lilia is waited by a loving mother and her husband Toha, also a war veteran, who absolutely does not know what to do, and as a result joins the ultra-right movement, which does not bode well for the future. Although the events of the film take place in a relatively quiet and safe rear (the film was shot before Russian full-scale invasion), the war does not let the heroine out of its steel claws, gradually destroying family ties and increasing the distance between Lilia and society, for which the war is "somewhere in the east". With wings clipped by PTSD, "Babochka" will still have to make difficult decisions herself and try to find herself again in a peaceful life.

Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells)

(Director Olesia Morhunets-Isaienko, 2021)

An atmospheric historical drama, a joint project of Poland and Ukraine, the leitmotif of which was the Christmas song "Shchedryk" (Carol of the Bells), which gained worldwide fame thanks to the Ukrainian genius composer Mykola Leontovych. 1939, in the city of Stanislavov (present-day Ivano-Frankivsk), three families live in one house: Ivaniuk (Ukrainians), Kalinovsky (Poles) and Hershkovych (Jews). The neighbors do not get along very well with each other, however, with the appearance of a real enemy – first the punitive regime of the USSR, and then the German Nazis – all contradictions and resentments fade into the background. In the center of the story is the fate of children from the three mentioned families, who, with the advent of Soviet power, lose their parents and find shelter in a family of Ukrainians. Having survived all the hardships and dangers of the Second World War, Kalinovsky and Hershkovych children, under the compulsion of the "Soviet liberators", are sent from Ivaniuk family to an orphanage for re-education, but even there, thanks to Shchedryk, who "makes people kinder," they find the strength to preserve humanity and not lose their national identity.