Klondike

Winner of the Best Director prize in the World Dramatic competition at Sundance, where it premiered just over a month before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Maryna Er Gorbach’s searing Donbass-set drama revolves around the pregnant Irka (Oxana Cherkashyna), her taciturn husband Tolik (Sergey Shadrin) and the downing of the Malaysian Airlines flight on July 17, 2014, a large chunk of which lands on the couple’s farm. Caught between pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels and Ukrainian patriots—in the opening scene, a wall of their house is blown to smithereens by a ‘stray’ mortar shell—the couple are torn between fleeing or holding their ground. Irka is determined to stay…

‘Gorbach's uncompromising, formally remarkable Sundance prizewinner… [is] a vision of the ongoing war in Donbass that brooks no compromise in depicting the severe impact of the conflict on the region’s civilians—in particular, the innocent women to whom the film is dedicated... Potent… Shattering.’—Guy Lodge, Variety