Cinema innovations and the cinema of hope

It will be reminded that after a year break, the Ukrainian Oscar Committee has started operating again. As is known, it has undergone certain structural and organizational transformations, and now the moviemakers who are part of the world cinema process and know well its nuances are members of the committee.

So, here is the result of the first voting of the new recruiters: the film Ukrainian Sheriffs by 34-year-old Roman Bondarchuk will take part in the Academy Awards competition from Ukraine. In spite of his young age, Yurii Illienko’s pupil has a long list of films, mostly short ones, with many being winners of prestigious international film festivals.

The specific feature of this year’s Ukrainian Oscar nominee is that this is a non-action film. Frankly speaking, I was sure that they will vote for Taras Tkachenko’s The Nest of the Turtledove. But today the success of documentary films and literature is no surprise (as is known, Svetlana Alexievich won the Novel Prize for documentary prose).

The Ukrainian Sheriffs is now screened at the movie theaters. The faraway shimmering of Oscar award must boost the interest of the audience.

ON THE VERGE OF CIVILIZATIONS

The heroes of the film are village sheriffs, as they are called, Viktor, 50, and Volodia, 44. However, their official status sounds as public assistants of the district inspector. They in fact very much look like American policemen – a kind of embodiment of the male nature: weather-beaten hardened faces, a combination of unhurried and confident force and quite strong energy, and mild sense of humor as well.

They are living and working on the verge of civilizations and ethnoses in Kherson oblast, not far from the Crimean border. They are supported by the village chairman Viktor Maruniak, former teacher of history. The trio of characters looks like a stronghold of new Ukraine and its future. An essential nuance is that it is a Cossack village, which has never been in serfdom. Because often this slavery fluid is still present in the culture genes and the blood.

There is a break of civilizations in the village Stara Zburivka. Here you can find a homeless man Kolia and his wife Tania, who are beaten and bitten by life literally to bones and bruises: they have neither home, nor any property. They speak Russian, but of course their Russian language is crippled and beaten like themselves. Like a separatist who tells history tales about the Great Rus’ which originated from the Chinese Wall. There are drunkards and thieves, the settlement has its own sores. At the same time, the village is beautiful, and the houses and the households there are well-groomed.

Actually, the film is about that: the entire Ukrainian life is hanging between two civilization codes. Whether we will choose again, like it happened in the 1920s-1930s, the way of redneck industrialism (solemn factory landscape, with living houses in so-called baroque style), or get to the clear surface of history where free people live. They won’t be waiting for expected freedom which will be brought from Kyiv or Moscow, or even Washington, but they will change their life themselves – its basis, its foundation. The sheriffs and the village chairmen treat people not like an instrument, not like “wheels of history,” but like people, as equals.

This is an innovation. Will we see a fiction film about such people, instead of these endless new pseudo-Ukrainian TV series, through which this Soviet-feudal fluid of slavery is flowing? So far they are lacking new heroes. Because they are not looking for them and simply don’t want to see any.

WHAT IS BORN?

Does Bondarchuk’s film have at least the smallest chance to win the Oscar race? It is hard to tell. However, even the fact that Roman is a namesake of Oscar winner Sergey Bondarchuk – he comes from Kherson steppe as well – can play some role. Everything is possible.

Besides, the sheriffs bear certain association with American cinema mythology. But actually the mythology is our authentic one, it was not borrowed. Because the roots go back to Zaporizhia Sich, its democratic and simply human foundation. Roman, who comes from the world of Kherson steppe, but has been living in Kyiv for a long time, is stubbornly working with the material of Kherson remote places. And he is right in doing so. For this is cinema, and the audience really feels how deeply the author went through the material, it was not taken out of nowhere.

Today Roman Bondarchuk is shooting a feature fiction film Volcano in Kherson steppe. It is about a foreigner who got stuck in this endless time-space. May God help us, and such films will give way to great cinema.