Ukrainian director Valentyn Vasyanovych’s enigmatic war drama, set in Donbas, is brutal in its depiction of conflict but also elusively redemptive
Set at the start of the Donbas war in 2014, Valentyn Vasyanovych’s fifth feature, Reflection, chimes horribly with the current mood, grim and exacting as it is compared with previous, more ironic films about the conflict such as Sergei Loznitza’s Donbass and Roman Bondarchuk’s Volcano. It is composed in largely static tableau shots, many of them featuring windows, windscreens and other partitions, implying both the estranged unreality of the conflict taking place so close to civilised life, as well as an elusive redemption sought by the film’s characters.
The first window gets covered in multicoloured splatters at the paintballing birthday party of Polina, child of Serhiy (Roman Lutskyi), a Ukrainian surgeon. It’s a playful allusion to nearby warfare, which Serhiy discusses with Andriy (Andriy Rymaruk...
Set at the start of the Donbas war in 2014, Valentyn Vasyanovych’s fifth feature, Reflection, chimes horribly with the current mood, grim and exacting as it is compared with previous, more ironic films about the conflict such as Sergei Loznitza’s Donbass and Roman Bondarchuk’s Volcano. It is composed in largely static tableau shots, many of them featuring windows, windscreens and other partitions, implying both the estranged unreality of the conflict taking place so close to civilised life, as well as an elusive redemption sought by the film’s characters.
The first window gets covered in multicoloured splatters at the paintballing birthday party of Polina, child of Serhiy (Roman Lutskyi), a Ukrainian surgeon. It’s a playful allusion to nearby warfare, which Serhiy discusses with Andriy (Andriy Rymaruk...
- 5/30/2022
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
Reflection Of all the titles screening on the Lido this year, few had me as concerned and intrigued as Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Reflection. Concerned, because a few friends who’d already seen the director’s latest take on the Russian-Ukrainian war had testified to its unflinching depictions of violence and torture (including and especially one early scene involving a leg and a screwdriver). And intrigued, because it was Vasyanovich’s follow up to his Atlantis, winner of the Orizzonti lineup in 2019, a haunting excursion into a bombed-out no-man’s-land that cartwheeled between moments of extreme brutality and flickering glimpses of empathy. That film was set in a not-so-distant future where Ukraine had emerged victorious—and shattered—from the war with Russia. Reflection kicks off instead in 2014, the year the conflict broke out. Yet Vasyanovych doesn’t throw us to the battlefield from the start; for a short while, it leaves...
- 9/9/2021
- MUBI
In a series of beautiful and devastated frames within frames, Ukrainian director Valentyn Vasyanovych’s “Reflection” sets up a chain of shiveringly precise parallels — or rather, moral mirror-images — between the life and psyche of a civilian and the actions and reactions of that same man in war. A surgeon’s table is swapped for a cement torture plinth. Paintball pellets spackling a clear wall become bullets shattering a windshield. Hands that save lives become hands that dispense mercy kills. And then, perhaps even harder on the soul, there’s the question of how to go back to the life before, once you come home from a war no one really comes home from.
As in “Atlantis,” Vasyanovych’s near-future-set 2019 Venice Horizons winner, it is the tension between the startling and sometimes brutally visceral story each single scene contains and the coolly considered, contemplative manner of its containment — lit in perfectly centered shafts of painterly,...
As in “Atlantis,” Vasyanovych’s near-future-set 2019 Venice Horizons winner, it is the tension between the startling and sometimes brutally visceral story each single scene contains and the coolly considered, contemplative manner of its containment — lit in perfectly centered shafts of painterly,...
- 9/7/2021
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Valentyn Vasyanovych's Atlantis is exclusively showing on Mubi starting May 4, 2021 in many countries in the series Viewfinder.By 2017, the conflict with Russia in the Ukrainian territory had lasted for almost three years. My colleagues had shot several feature films about the conflict, mostly genre pieces. I also understood that this war was the most relevant topic and that I had to film it. When I started writing the script, I realized that I could not distance myself from the traditional dramatic structures. Nor from the set of characters with the protagonist being a friend and the antagonist being the enemy. My film turned out to be a standard military drama, no different from the films that have already been made. At some point, I came across information about the catastrophic deterioration of the water quality in the occupied territories; Predictions indicated that this crisis would eventually become an irreversible...
- 5/7/2021
- MUBI
Valentyn Vasyanovych’s award-winning drama casts deeply likable non-professionals – most with direct experience of the conflict with Russia
Ukrainian writer-director Valentyn Vasyanovych’s drama won the top prize in the Horizons strand at the Venice film festival in 2019: in the signature style of Slavic arthouse cinema, it mostly comprises a series of long-held, static widescreen tableaux. Each scene is about the same length, and within each long, ventilator-speed shot everything seems to carry the same weight: a man being berated by a supervisor at a steel mill and then jumping into the smelter in despair; another guy making a bathtub out of a rusted out car; a couple having sex in real time. The story is set in 2025, “a year after the end of the war” – in other words the one with Russia in eastern Ukraine that’s been rumbling away for years now. But instead of being numbingly dreary and depressing,...
Ukrainian writer-director Valentyn Vasyanovych’s drama won the top prize in the Horizons strand at the Venice film festival in 2019: in the signature style of Slavic arthouse cinema, it mostly comprises a series of long-held, static widescreen tableaux. Each scene is about the same length, and within each long, ventilator-speed shot everything seems to carry the same weight: a man being berated by a supervisor at a steel mill and then jumping into the smelter in despair; another guy making a bathtub out of a rusted out car; a couple having sex in real time. The story is set in 2025, “a year after the end of the war” – in other words the one with Russia in eastern Ukraine that’s been rumbling away for years now. But instead of being numbingly dreary and depressing,...
- 5/3/2021
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
“Atlantis” is a mythology long lost, yet fascination with its deluge persists—if not merely as an archaeological epithet—in Valentyn Vasyanovych’s new film of the same name. This referent is multivalent: “Atlantis” also alludes to the Ukrainian national icon (a trident) adopted as the coat of arms in 1992 in the aftermath of independence against what remained of the Soviet Union. The 2014 Russia-Ukraine war is another lineage of this film’s atmosphere. Catalyzed by the “Euromaiden” protests, civilian crowds rioted against the Ukraine government for their perceived hesitancy in joining Europe, instead exhibiting leniency towards Russia. Although geopolitical and cultural intermediary, Vasyanovych’s Ukraine bears little resemblance to the civilizing project of either Europe or Russia, West or East—and is instead positioned between redemption and collapse.
At the end of another Russia-Ukraine war, a speculative decade after 2014, Vasyanovych’s Atlantis brings no resolution to the conclusion of conflict.
At the end of another Russia-Ukraine war, a speculative decade after 2014, Vasyanovych’s Atlantis brings no resolution to the conclusion of conflict.
- 2/8/2021
- by Leo Zausen
- The Film Stage
Set in 2025, Ukraine’s post-apocalyptic International Feature Film Oscar entry Atlantis imagines life — and death — in the country one year after the ongoing war with Russia has ended. Sergiy (Andriy Rymaruk) and his friend Ivan (Vasyl Antoniak) both suffer from Ptsd, and lead joyless lives shooting at targets and working in a steel factory. When the factory is closed down by its British owner, Sergiy ends up driving a water truck around the barren landscape.
Everyone he encounters is dealing with death, whether they are searching for landmines or long-dead corpses. Katya (Liudmyla Bileka) is a former archaeologist who exhumes bodies and tries to identify them. She sees her new role as “digging up your own history.” A bond forms between her and Sergiy, giving a glimmer of hope.
In his fifth feature, which won the Venice Horizons top prize in 2019 and was released in the U.S. by Grasshopper Film last week,...
Everyone he encounters is dealing with death, whether they are searching for landmines or long-dead corpses. Katya (Liudmyla Bileka) is a former archaeologist who exhumes bodies and tries to identify them. She sees her new role as “digging up your own history.” A bond forms between her and Sergiy, giving a glimmer of hope.
In his fifth feature, which won the Venice Horizons top prize in 2019 and was released in the U.S. by Grasshopper Film last week,...
- 1/28/2021
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
Valentyn Vasyanovych earned notoriety as the cinematographer behind 2014’s “The Tribe,” but he finds a confident voice all his own as a director with “Atlantis,” his third feature as such but his most striking to date. Conjuring a bombed-out, postwar Ukraine in 2025, the film’s crumbling world eerily mirrors our own, and is barely distant enough to qualify as speculative fiction. Unfolding across austerely shot (by Vasyanovych himself) tableaux with ruinous production design that brings to mind the industrially fed-on environments of the “Fallout” video games or even Tarkovsky’s “Stalker,” “Atlantis” is a political howl from the soul about a decaying Europe. But
The biggest stretch of the imagination here is that the conflict between Russian and Ukraine has superficially ended, but its trickling, traumatic effects still linger. Especially for former soldier Sergey (Andriy Rymaruk), who nows toils in a foundry, addled by Ptsd. In the open shot of the film,...
The biggest stretch of the imagination here is that the conflict between Russian and Ukraine has superficially ended, but its trickling, traumatic effects still linger. Especially for former soldier Sergey (Andriy Rymaruk), who nows toils in a foundry, addled by Ptsd. In the open shot of the film,...
- 1/22/2021
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Atlantis Trailer — Valentyn Vasyanovych‘s Atlantis (2019) movie trailer has been released by Grasshopper Film and stars Andriy Rymaruk, Liudmyla Bileka, Vasyl Antoniak, Aykhan Hajibayli, Vagif Ogly, and Kateryna Popravka. Crew Valentyn Vasyanovych wrote the screenplay for Atlantis. Vasyanovych crafted the cinematography for the film. Vasyanovych conducted the film editing on the film. Plot Synopsis Atlantis‘s plot synopsis: [...]
Continue reading: Atlantis (2019) Movie Trailer: A Ptsd Soldier befriends a Volunteer Following Ukraine’s Victory over Russia...
Continue reading: Atlantis (2019) Movie Trailer: A Ptsd Soldier befriends a Volunteer Following Ukraine’s Victory over Russia...
- 12/31/2020
- by Rollo Tomasi
- Film-Book
"Due to the war, this territory became completely unsuitable for living." Grasshopper Film has released an official US trailer for an acclaimed, award-winning Ukrainian sci-fi drama titled Atlantis, which originally premiered at last year's Venice & Toronto Film Festivals. Set in Eastern Ukraine in 2025, the film is about a soldier suffering from Ptsd who befriends a young volunteer hoping to restore peaceful energy to a brutally war-torn society. The film is Ukraine's official Best International Film submission this year for the Academy Awards, and it also won the Venice Horizons Best Film Award in 2019, and a few other film festival prizes. Starring Andriy Rymaruk, Liudmyla Bileka, and Vasyl Antoniak. This received rave reviews, saying that it's "sensitively observed and meticulously crafted. A remarkable piece of filmmaking from an exciting emerging Eastern European voice." It definitely looks bleak, but also seems powerfully optimistic in a way. Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Valentyn Vasyanovych's Atlantis,...
- 12/30/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
New York-based distribution company Grasshopper Film has acquired North American rights to Valentyn Vasyanovych’s sci-fi drama “Atlantis,” Ukraine’s official selection for next year’s Academy Awards.
Represented in international markets by Belgian sales group Best Friend Forever, “Atlantis” played at Toronto, Rotterdam and Venice, where it won the best film award in the Horizons Competition. The critically acclaimed film was also selected for New Directors/New Films.
The movie, which is expected to be released theatrically early next year, is set in 2025. Eastern Ukraine in a desert unsuitable for human habitation and water is an expensive commodity brought by trucks. As a wall is being built on the border, Sergiy, a former soldier, is having trouble adapting to this new reality. He meets Katya while on the Black Tulip mission dedicated to exhuming war corpses. Together, they try to return to some sort of normal life in which...
Represented in international markets by Belgian sales group Best Friend Forever, “Atlantis” played at Toronto, Rotterdam and Venice, where it won the best film award in the Horizons Competition. The critically acclaimed film was also selected for New Directors/New Films.
The movie, which is expected to be released theatrically early next year, is set in 2025. Eastern Ukraine in a desert unsuitable for human habitation and water is an expensive commodity brought by trucks. As a wall is being built on the border, Sergiy, a former soldier, is having trouble adapting to this new reality. He meets Katya while on the Black Tulip mission dedicated to exhuming war corpses. Together, they try to return to some sort of normal life in which...
- 11/17/2020
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
by Nathaniel R
The Ukrainian Oscar committee has announced the country's submission for Best International Feature contest at the forthcoming Academy Awards. They will be sending Atlantis by 49 year-old rising director Valentyn Vasyanovych, which is a near-future drama about a former soldier in a decaying country. The soldier volunteers to help exhume war corpses. It's said to be an ambitious work with a reportedly riveting lead performance from film newcomer Andriy Rymaruk...
The Ukrainian Oscar committee has announced the country's submission for Best International Feature contest at the forthcoming Academy Awards. They will be sending Atlantis by 49 year-old rising director Valentyn Vasyanovych, which is a near-future drama about a former soldier in a decaying country. The soldier volunteers to help exhume war corpses. It's said to be an ambitious work with a reportedly riveting lead performance from film newcomer Andriy Rymaruk...
- 9/24/2020
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Valentyn Vasyanovych’s “Atlantis,” a dystopian film set in war-torn Ukraine, won the Crystal Arrow Award of the 11th edition of Les Arcs Film Festival.
The film, which won the top prize at Venice’s Horizons section this year, takes place in 2025 in Eastern Ukraine after a ten-year war against Russia which has left the country in ruins. “Atlantis” follows two war veterans, Sergiy (Andriy Rymaruk) and a mate, who are both affected by the war and are living in an abandoned building.
Presided over by the French filmmaker Guillaume Nicloux, the jury was comprised of Santiago Amigorena, the Colombian screenwriter, producer and author, Mélanie De Biasio, the Belgian musician, Nina Hoss, the German actor, Atiq Rahimi, the Afghan director, and Antoine Reinartz, the French actor.
Besides the Cystal Arrow prize, five other kudos were handed out at les Arcs, including the Grand Jury Prize which went to Sarah Gavron’s “Rocks,...
The film, which won the top prize at Venice’s Horizons section this year, takes place in 2025 in Eastern Ukraine after a ten-year war against Russia which has left the country in ruins. “Atlantis” follows two war veterans, Sergiy (Andriy Rymaruk) and a mate, who are both affected by the war and are living in an abandoned building.
Presided over by the French filmmaker Guillaume Nicloux, the jury was comprised of Santiago Amigorena, the Colombian screenwriter, producer and author, Mélanie De Biasio, the Belgian musician, Nina Hoss, the German actor, Atiq Rahimi, the Afghan director, and Antoine Reinartz, the French actor.
Besides the Cystal Arrow prize, five other kudos were handed out at les Arcs, including the Grand Jury Prize which went to Sarah Gavron’s “Rocks,...
- 12/21/2019
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
In Valentyn Vasyanovych’s post-apocalyptic Atlantis, the sky above Ukraine hangs like a sheet of steel, a uniform mass of clouds bucketing water onto the mud-covered wasteland down below. The year is 2025, and the country has just emerged victorious–if shattered–from a war with Russia. It’s a conflict all too steeped in the decade’s real-life skirmishes between Ukraine and its neighbor to come across as strictly fictional, and that’s the thing that makes Atlantis so disturbing. It’d be tempting to call Vasyanovych’s a dystopia, were it not for that fact that, all through its 108 minutes, everything about it feels almost unbearably vivid–closer to some news report or a post-conflict documentary than any artificial rendition thereof. There are soldiers gingerly plucking mines out of fields, foreign NGOs fretting about the country’s recovery, unidentified corpses exhumed and re-buried, and shell-shocked veterans struggling to find...
- 11/15/2019
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
“It took you 10 years to cleanse this region of Soviet propaganda and myths,” says one character to another in “Atlantis,” going on to suggest that the devastation now left behind may never be “cleansed” at all. A strikingly bleak vision of a near future in which Ukraine has won its war with Russia but been left in ruins, this almost abstract drama by multi-hyphenate Valentyn Vasyanovych nabbed the top prize in Venice’s Horizons section.
Its cryptic, rigorously minimalist progress will test the patience of many viewers and present a challenge for commercial placements. Still, this is — not just the Ukraine’s, as this largely depoliticized statement is one of universal relevance.
The only direct we glimpse we get of the war is a chilling opening infrared view of a man being clubbed, then dumped into the grave he’s just been forced to dig. Like much of “Atlantis,” this is a sequence sans backstory,...
Its cryptic, rigorously minimalist progress will test the patience of many viewers and present a challenge for commercial placements. Still, this is — not just the Ukraine’s, as this largely depoliticized statement is one of universal relevance.
The only direct we glimpse we get of the war is a chilling opening infrared view of a man being clubbed, then dumped into the grave he’s just been forced to dig. Like much of “Atlantis,” this is a sequence sans backstory,...
- 9/16/2019
- by Dennis Harvey
- Variety Film + TV
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.