We all know the situation in Ukraine at the moment, but while it is only coming out here now, this film pre-dates the war, having been released at home on Christmas Eve, 2020. Given that, and the fact that I have no real knowledge of Ukrainian politics beyond the fact that there is a war going on, I am not going to attempt to frame Once Upon a Time in Ukraine through that lens. Well, that’s one reason. The other reason I’m not going to attempt to frame the film through contemporary politics is that while I’m sure those allusions exist within it, they aren’t needed to appreciate it.
Taras Shevchenko (played here by Roman Lutskyi) was a real historical figure; a writer, artist and poet whose work, a little reading suggests, is considered foundational to modern Ukrainian literature. The film, however, imagines him as a serf who,...
Taras Shevchenko (played here by Roman Lutskyi) was a real historical figure; a writer, artist and poet whose work, a little reading suggests, is considered foundational to modern Ukrainian literature. The film, however, imagines him as a serf who,...
- 4/13/2023
- by Sam Inglis
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
"He has something that is not his to have. I want to take it back." Goldwyn Films has revealed an official US trailer for an indie action western from Ukraine titled Once Upon a Time in Ukraine, their local riff on Once Upon a Time in the West. This actually opened in Ukraine back in 2020 (with an alternate title The Inglorious Serfs), and never played outside of the country before this year. With the war going on there's more interest in Ukraine so they're finally giving it a chance to screen in the US, and it actually looks like some good B-movie fun. "What if Taras Shevchenko put down his pen and took a samurai sword into his hands?" A Ukrainian serf named Taras teams up with the samurai Akayo to get revenge for Akayo’s master and to free his beloved Maria from a slave master. Roman Lutskyi stars with Kateryna Sliusar,...
- 3/16/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
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
Ukrainian multi-hyphenate Valentyn Vasyanovych returns to the Venice Film Festival with competition title Reflection (Vidblysk). Like his 2019 drama Atlantis, which won best film in the Horizons section and was Ukraine’s 2020 Oscar entry, Reflection takes a stark look at the horrors of the Russian-Ukraine war.
While Atlantis was set in 2025, after the imagined end of the ongoing war, this is set in 2014, the first year of the conflict. Ukrainian surgeon Serhiy (Roman Lutskyi) is attempting to deal with the challenges of his work, and seems uncomfortable when spending time with his daughter, ex-wife and her new partner. He is captured by the Russian military forces in Eastern Ukraine, where he’s forced to assist his captors and to witness brutal torture and humiliation.
Writer-director-cinematographer Vasyanovych presents events in a quiet, matter of fact way, both mimicking the cold detachment of the aggressors and underlining the fact that these terrors do not require sensationalizing.
While Atlantis was set in 2025, after the imagined end of the ongoing war, this is set in 2014, the first year of the conflict. Ukrainian surgeon Serhiy (Roman Lutskyi) is attempting to deal with the challenges of his work, and seems uncomfortable when spending time with his daughter, ex-wife and her new partner. He is captured by the Russian military forces in Eastern Ukraine, where he’s forced to assist his captors and to witness brutal torture and humiliation.
Writer-director-cinematographer Vasyanovych presents events in a quiet, matter of fact way, both mimicking the cold detachment of the aggressors and underlining the fact that these terrors do not require sensationalizing.
- 9/7/2021
- by Anna Smith
- Deadline Film + TV
Vasyanovych won the top Horizons prize in 2019 with Atlantis.
Screen can reveal the first trailer for Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Reflection, which plays in Competiton at this year’s Venice Film Festival (September 1-11).
After winning the top Horizons prize in 2019 with Atlantis, Ukraine’s Vasyanovych steps up to Competition with a drama — which he also wrote, shot and edited — about a surgeon (Roman Lutskyi) who is captured by Russian military forces in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine. He returns to his comfortable middle-class apartment on release, and tries to find a renewed purpose in life.
Produced by Vladimir Yatsenko of Forefilms,...
Screen can reveal the first trailer for Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Reflection, which plays in Competiton at this year’s Venice Film Festival (September 1-11).
After winning the top Horizons prize in 2019 with Atlantis, Ukraine’s Vasyanovych steps up to Competition with a drama — which he also wrote, shot and edited — about a surgeon (Roman Lutskyi) who is captured by Russian military forces in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine. He returns to his comfortable middle-class apartment on release, and tries to find a renewed purpose in life.
Produced by Vladimir Yatsenko of Forefilms,...
- 9/5/2021
- by Orlando Parfitt
- ScreenDaily
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