Volcano': Film Review | Karlovy Vary 2018

Volcano': Film Review | Karlovy Vary 2018

Venue -:  Karlovy Vary International Film Festival
Production companies -:  Tato Film, Elemag Pictures GmbH, KNM, South
Cast -:  Serhiy Stepansky, Viktor Zhdanov, Khrystyna Deilyk
Director -:  Roman Bondarchuk
Screenwriters -:  Alla Tyutyunnik, Roman Bondarchuk, Dar'ya Averchenko
Producers -:  Olena Yershova, Tanja Georgieva, Michel Merkt, Dar’ya Averchenko
Cinematographer -:  Vadim Ilkov
Editors -:  Mykola Bazarkin, Heike Parplies
Music -:  Anton Baibakov
Sales company -:  Pluto Film Distribution Network, Berlin
103 minutes

Set within the remote badlands of the Pontic-Caspian field in southern Ukraine, Volcano could be a poetically surreal personal letter to AN ferine corner of the Wild East. a world co-production between Ukraine, Deutschland and European country, director Roman Bondarchuk's initial dramatic feature could be a mixture of Kafka-esque road motion-picture show and up to date western, made in luxurious visuals and lyrical strangeness. There square measure hints of David Lynch's grisly absurdism here, however additionally some pleasantly carnivalesque interludes akin to Federico Fellini, amir Kusturica and even Wes Anderson. one in every of the stand-out world premieres at Karlovy Vary fete last week, Volcano continues its Eurofest tour next week with stopovers in Palic and Odessa. a lot of bookings square measure bound to follow.

Volcano': Film Review 

However cryptic and disjointed it seems initially, Volcano could be a fantastically crafted work with robust screen pedigree. Bondarchuk's 2015 debut feature, the rollicking documentary Ukrainian Sheriffs, was Ukraine's official submission to the foreign-language Academy Award race. one in every of his producers, Michel Merkt, additionally features a stellar portfolio of Academy-endorsed art house hits together with Maren Ade's Tony Erdmann and Paul Verhoeven's Elle. Theatrical prison-breaking potential for Volcano can depend upon sharp promoting, however timely political subtext ANd an Oscar-friendly chronicle ought to facilitate.

Volcano opens with AN arrestingly pretty sequence, AN extended aerial shot of droplets splashing in picture onto a dark body of water before a large, mysterious barge swims into read. Bondarchuk and his camera operator Vadim Ilkov offer more such exquisite tableaux, from big mist-cloaked concrete bridges to endless fields of parched sunflowers stretching off into time. tho' not forever directly concerning the plot, these aesthetical pictures cumulatively counsel a land of surreal separateness and alien beauty. we tend to square measure through the mirror, Alice.

Into this crumbling, transcendental dreamscape comes a bunch of outsiders from the large town, off the grid and out of their depth. AN SUV carrying a team from the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), the UN-like inter-governmental cluster charged with watching events on the bottom in destroyed Ukraine, arrives within the sparsely inhabited border region getting ready to Crimea. once their automotive breaks down within the middle of obscurity, interpreter Lukas (Serhiy Stepansky) prompts alone to urge facilitate, however he finds few signs of life or maybe a good radiophone signal. once he finally returns to the vehicle, it's nonexistent at the side of his passengers.

A unknown in a very strange land, Lukas then stumbles into a series of unfortunate events, together with a black rave party in a very student dormitory, a violent encounter with native militia men, a mass brawl that culminates in a very fireworks show and a alarming spell of imprisonment in a very deep pit graven into the guts of an enormous helianthus field. Meanwhile, the colourful background solid he encounters embrace a circus strongman, a mysterious bearded legendary creature and a spiritual choir of singing ladies whose village was sunken  to create manner for a hydro-electric dam.

When the contrary plot of Volcano finally settles down, it centers on Lukas turning into a reluctant house guest of tragicomic failing creator Vovo (Viktor Zhdanov) and his coquettish girl Marushka (Khrystyna Deilyk). together with his cash, passport and papers purloined, this stranded big-city boy has very little selection however to remain place and wait to be saved. however as days stretch into weeks, he finds himself slowly seduced by the laidback lawlessness of this large, impoverished, sun-scorched region. "It is total disorder," Vovo explains. "If you get wont to it, you may survive."

Modelling key characters on relatives of his producer and co-writer adult female, Dar'ya Averchenko, Bondarchuk planned Volcano a decade agone, before Ukraine's in progress conflict with Russian-backed forces and Vladimir Putin's forced annexation of Crimea. whereas these events inevitably encroach on the drama in places, they ne'er overwhelm the in darkness comic central plot. Even while not the reality-warping effects of war, it's pretty clear this haunted backwater would still be a singular no man's land, caught between enmity towards trendy Russian military would possibly and bittersweet yearning for the relative prosperity of Soviet times. The director's background in documentaries could be a bonus here, grounding the film's a lot of fanciful magic-realism parts in cool-headed, empiric naturalism.


The episodic, zig-zagging, fable-like plot of Volcano won't charm to any or all tastes, and a few of the native references inevitably drift in translation. That said, Bondarchuk's poetic mix of beautiful visuals and pared-down dialogue is smart in any language. His casting of non-professionals and first-timers is additionally a daring gamble that pays off. Despite his angular attractiveness, Stepansky is truly a sound designer by coaching, with a solid record of offscreen credits together with Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi's port prize-winner The Tribe. however he acquits himself well in his screen acting debut, his visual communication softening from fish-out-of-water tension to beatific calm as Lukas sinks ever deeper into the Twilight Zone.