It’s not hard to think about current Ukrainian/Russian conflict while watching a Ukrainian film.
While the only film I’ve seen explicitly about the conflict is Sniper: The White Raven, I admittedly haven’t seen many films that allude the conflict from an intimate perspective. That was the goal of filmmaker, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, when he presented his debut feature Pamfir, at the 75th Cannes Film Festival. While the film was in competition for the Palme d’Or, Pamfir’s debut made headlines as it was in competition with the Russian film, Tchaikovsky’s Wife, a selection criticized by the Ukrainian film community for ignoring an attempted boycott during the invasion of Ukraine. Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk said in an interview with Variety, “Cannes doesn’t realize that by selecting this film they are providing a service: to Russia and to their propaganda. And make no mistake, they will use it.” While the Palme d’Or went to Triangle of Sadness, Pamfir is a triumph in its own right, knowing how to exalt intimacy out of a crisis.
The film follows Pamfir (Oleksandr Yatsentiuk), who upon returning home to his family after a long absence, finds that his son burned down a prayer house. Now, on the eve of a carnival, Pamfir has to reconnect with old smuggling contacts to raise the money and fix the prayer house. Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk is a powerful director, who’s smooth and deliberate long takes put us deep into Pamfir’s perspective, and the world he inhabits. The direction sells how Pamfir is being torn into two different worlds. The natural fog of his home village slowly descends into a deeper, industrial environment, reflecting Pamfir’s desperate decent into the criminal underworld. The folkloric carnival aesthetic sprinkled throughout Pamfir’s village contrasts effectively well with the smugglers, as if the two elements of Ukrainian culture are fighting for attention.
Oleksandr Yatsentiuk’s performance anchor’s Pamfir amazingly. While he’s being forced to work with smugglers again, Yatsentiuk delivers a frustrated, morose performance. You can tell he just wants to be with his family, and every day he has to work with these smugglers aches him. All the while, twinkles of chemistry fester to the surface with the smugglers, a natural camaraderie that stems from time and experience. Pamfir’s warmth with his family is balanced perfectly with his frustration and intensity amongst the smugglers, even scary at times when he needs to defend himself from gangsters. He’s a compelling character lead that’ll allow people unfamiliar with Ukrainian culture to empathize with him.
Pamfir is a powerful film that highlights one of main costs of war or conflict, loss of time. As the films weaves through the smuggler networks, there’s a depressing undercurrent that this is all time Pamfir could be spending with his family. Tying Pamfir’s family time to the traditional carnival reflects how Ukrainian culture is in danger of losing its way, its sense of self, through the conflict it’s forced to be a part of. Pamfir is forced to make morally questionable choices to help is family, but in return he loses his sense of self, just like how Ukraine may lose itself in the wake of its conflicts. Pamfir is a film about sacrifice, personally and culturally, that’ll hit anyone hard.
Pamfir will have its American premier on March 31st as part of the New Directors/New Films series at Film at Lincoln Center.
