Every growing up, maturing, developing is an exiting process as far as controversial one. It fully concerns the Ukrainian cinematography. After the crisis of 1990-2000, it finally got on the feet. Quantity parameters please: over 30 feature films on release every year. But the state of cinema is defined not only by the figures of release and budget: it’s important how interesting is the artistic expression offered by directors.
The following list doesn’t claim to be fully objective. However, the films collected in this list became the events not only countrywide but also abroad at the most influential world festivals.
- “The Tribe”
Director – Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
Release date – 2014
Ukraine – the Netherlands
This film is unique from different perspectives. This is the only feature film in the world in Sign Language. This is the only film in the history of Cannes Film Festival, which got three – including Grand Prize – awards of the Critics’ Week section. This is the only director’s work in our history that got such a number of awards at the abroad festivals – over 40.
The main character – a young boy, who arrives at a boarding school for the deaf youth. As it usually happens in such institutions, the cruel hierarchy among the foster students dominates there. He gets his place in it. However, he falls in love with one of the girls, whose body is a part of the illegal business – prostitution and finds himself in the deadly conflict with a half-gangster “tribe”. There’re no dialogues or titres: the spectator immerses into the world of gestures and shocking silent scenes. Instead of the words, the author used the language of choreography. So, the whole film is a ductile poem, the dance film, which is hard to forget.
2. “Donbas”
Director – Serhiy Loznitsa
Release date – 2018
Ukraine – Germany – the Netherlands – France – Romania
“Donbas” for Loznitsa is an unusual work. Firstly, palpable ironic mood predominates there. Previous playful plots of this author became kind of journey to the heart of darkness. So, it’s really new intonation. Secondly, fragmented structure: 13 scenes without a protagonist, mainly from the life of “Novorussia”. It can confuse. But “Donbas” is partly about “Novorussia” and the war. First of all, it’s about so-called post-truth.
Losnitsa slowly, in all details unfolds the picture of manipulations, with the help of which “Russian world” asserts its hegemony. It can be seen from the very first episode, where the actors are putting makeup on to pretend to be “simple people” and then stand for the accidental witnesses of a staged shelling. Then, the level of lies only grows up. The bigger they become, the more is the contrast with the sufferings of simple people – the citizens, who hide from shellings in the cellars, businessman, who’s boldly robbed by the new “authority”, a Ukrainian captive, who’s lynched on the street. The camera here is the main character and simultaneously the antagonist. For the sake of a convincing propagandist shot any sacrifice is made, the human one as well.
Loznytsa doesn’t grudge satiric colours – in Hohol mood – for depicting wild “Novorussian” customs. In the end, he has funny, scary and sharp tragicomedy about the reality, in which the reality was cancelled as unnecessary stuff.
The film has been awarded in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes Film Festival for Best Director.
3. “Minor People”
Date release – 2001
Ukraine
Director – Kira Muratova
It’s easy from the first sight but far from simple comedy. In the beginning, we’re deceived by an accidental death. Then, the feast of absurd is developing step by step. The deceased has a twin brother and it’s one of the numerous splitters and only one layer of twists, which covers all characters regardless of the level of confidence. A Hohol’s whirlwind sweeps across the plot, mixing the dead and alive, odds and singers, mafia and teachers of literature, hysterical postwomen and scared doctors, kindhearted bodyguards and romantic schizophrenics. The characters of Sehiy Chetvertkov, Nataliia Buzko, Pylyp Panov, Jean Daniel are funny and moving in their pretended determination and sincere helplessness, in their inability to be cruel – naive and worth of love “minor” people. Only Muratova could create such a carnival of life and madness on the screen.
Grand Prize of the «Go East-200» Film Festival – Wiesbaden, Germany.
4. “Spell your name”
Release date – 2006
Ukraine – the USA
Director – Serhiy Bukovsky
The executive producer of this documentary film was Steven Spielberg, who is partly of Ukrainian origins since his two grandfathers migrated to the USA from Ukraine.
The film was based on the video confessions of those who survived the Holocaust. The volunteers of the Shoah fund, established by Spielberg, worked on the recordings. Bukovsky managed to tell about unbearably terrible things, skipping emotional overflow, pathetic and pitch-voicing intonations. This is a lyric, quite and watercolour work. The author, staying behind the shot, shows old streets, the houses of people, who lived there but now the houses are empty and graves merged with the landscape. On the screen – the railway station’s interiors, the hustle before the train departure, ragged clothes, little things from the far household goods – ancient lamp, ripped doors, rusty lock. Bukovsky makes melancholic and inquiring immerse into the vanished world of the Jewish towns, carries out calm research of archaeologist thanks to which the film cloth comes to life.
“Spell your name” isn’t just the film about a person in the big and merciless history. Bukovsky’s picture is about value of each separate story. And that space, which could become or maybe it will become general for all of us because the part of its history is Babi Yar. That’s how the humanity survives its most terrible catastrophes, marking them on the map of the general memory.
5. “Delta”
Release date – 2017
Ukraine – Germany
Director – Oleksandr Techynskyi
The documentalist Oleksandr Techynskyi (born in 1979, Dnipropetrovsk) debuted in 2013 with a witty short film “Sirs and Seniors”, filmed in Uman at the times of Hasidic pilgrimage. Next year Oleksandr with Oleksiy Solodunov and Dmytro Stoykov became the co-author of the feature film “Everything is on fire” dedicated to the Maidan. The film won the MDR-Filmpreis award for the best Eastern Europe film at the festival DOK Leipzig (Germany). The world premiere of Techynskyi new work “Delta” also takes place in Leipzig and there the director was mentioned by the jury.
The action unfolds in the town of Vylkove in the Danube Delta. The characters live, work and die on the water. The camera with hypnotic persuasion flies over the river, inspecting the life of Vylkove’s men in their everyday routine. Techynskyi fully describes bright and firm characters, inserts them in the landscape, created in the best traditions of Flemish Renaissance. Techynskyi doesn’t forget about religious motives, about all these domestic mysteries, which adds the metaphysics dimension to everything that happens in the film. The mix of visual perfection with the semantic saturation allows naming “Delta” an exceptional event for Ukrainian cinematography.
6. “Pryputni”
Release date – 2017
Ukraine
Director – Arkadiy Nepytaliuk
Pryputni is the name of the village in the Chernihiv region. As well as the sign for half-wild pigeons that live next to the people but escape the full domestication, thus wondering between two worlds. Arkadiy Nepytaliuk, for whom this is the feature film debut, considers that this definition describes his characters to the full extent. They’re the same pryputni, the residents of the small town, who didn’t leave the village and didn’t become the urban-dwellers. Their language – surzhyk (which sounds extremely juicy in the film), their scandals – long and enchanting – unintentional, their determination to do things till the end – deadly. Screeching market seller Lyudka with the daughter Svitlana go to visit grandma Zina in Pryputni. Grandma Zina has a harsh character but desperately stands for the family. Taxi driver Yurko drives Svetka and Lyudka, overwhelmed with undivided love for the Nizhyn intelligent woman Hrystya. Traumatized and angry Pryputni resident Slavik has a calm and good-tempered father, old Stanislavovych. In particular moment all these characters bump into each other with the further Homeric explosive effect. It could become a thriller, but it turned out to be a grasping black comedy. The director himself was born in the village and looked at it without a blurred eye. He doesn’t hide either fake morality or everyday anger or misery which is enough in the province. But at the same time, Nepytaliuk finds the semantic angle, thanks to which all this hustle looks funny, and the step from the hatred and selfishness to the love is made easily.
7. “Wayfarers”
Release date – 2005
Ukraine
Director – Ihor Strembitskyi
This black and white 10-minute documentary novel was shot at the two locations – in the residential home for elderly actors and in the psychiatric hospital. It’s the first Ukrainian film to have won the “Palme d’Or” award in the short film section at the Cannes Film Festival.
Whether award or film is the coincidence of unreal circumstances but Strembitskyi had to finish diploma work, for which he had been given the shreds of an old Soviet film tape. They were barely enough, so the film was shot in one take. It’s stunning how Ihor could reach such a semantic and visual saturation. Even this black and white rag becomes suggestive and charming as a dream. There are piercing shots – elderly blind actor reads the poems about love, the patients of psychiatric hospital smile happily at the camera, light, warm scenes of the family cosiness, poetic images of the spring gardens, tender people songs. All these treasured finds contribute to the film cloth of Dovzhenko’s level.
Finally, I can add that this seven could be easily supplemented with the ten, or even twelve.
Dmytro Desyateryk, “Day”, specially for opinionua.com