In collaboration with Ukrainian-Canadian programmers Alina Senchenko and Iryna Borzilova, we are presenting a comprehensive overview of Ukrainian film history, spanning nearly a century, from the Soviet era to the present day. A portion of the proceeds from this series will be donated to victims of the war in Ukraine through the Maple Hope Foundation.
Roman Bondarchuk’s first fiction feature offers a strange, surreal, and sometimes comical look at small-town life in the Kherson region. When his car breaks down on assignment, Lukas, part of an intergovernmental security detail, leaves his team and vehicle in search of assistance in the nearby town of Beryslav. Lukas’s return to a mysteriously vanished automobile and outfit initiates an extraordinary journey into the scorching sun of the “Grey Zone,” a territory in between the Russian-occupied and Ukrainian-controlled areas where neither side has full control and peculiar customs abide. Drawing on his characteristically Ukrainian sense of the absurd, Bondarchuk’s portrayal of the Ukrainian steppe unfolds like a drunken dream, somewhere between reality and nightmare.
“An impressively shot drama marbled with welcome notes of absurdist comedy and wry humour … Part of the film’s appeal lies in its unsettling, dreamlike strangeness.” (Alissa Simon, Variety)
Roman Bondarchuk
A graduate from Kiev National Theatre, Cinema and Television University, Roman Bondarchuk has directed short films, documentaries, music videos and the feature film Volcano (2018) which premiered at Karlovy Vary. The film was screened at over 50 festivals worldwide and won 12 awards including the Shevchenko National Prize, the highest state prize of Ukraine for works of culture and arts. Roman’s feature-length documentary, Ukrainian Sheriffs, won the Special Jury Prize at IDFA in 2015 and was selected as the Ukrainian submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. His second documentary, Dixie Land (2016) received a Golden Duke Award for Best Ukrainian Film at the Odesa International Film Festival. Roman also works as an art director and member of the selection committee of the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival DocuDays UA. He has been a member of the selection committee for the Ukrainian submissions to the Academy Awards since 2019.
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