Canadian Premiere
Maryna Er Gorbach’s film is set in the Donbass region of Ukraine, and its depiction of war has a grim topicality today. The director uses the real-life downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014 as a backdrop for a tale of courage and resistance. Irka (Oxana Cherkashyna) is seven months pregnant and living in the countryside with her partner Tolik (Sergiy Shadrin); as the film opens, they are facing the dilemma of whether or not to flee the area. The desperate, pliant Tolik wants safety above all, while Irka is reluctant to abandon the farm they call home. Caught between Russian separatists on one hand and the expectation of loyalty to Ukraine, the couple tries to balance the urgent, conflicting demands of civil war, and it’s no easy task.
Shot in elaborately choreographed long takes, Klondike is a feat of intricate staging, and Er Gorbach uses unity of space to illustrate the ever-growing divisions among her characters. Tense, haunting, and tragic, this is a truly powerful work of art.
Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic, Sundance 2022
Oxana Cherkashyna, Sergiy Shadrin, Oleg Scherbina, Oleg Shevchuk, Artur Aramyan, Evgenij Efremov
Ukraine/Turkey
2022
In Ukrainian, Russian, Chechen, and Dutch with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Secret Agent
Having run afoul of an influential bureaucrat in Brazil’s military dictatorship circa 1977, Marcelo decamps to Recife to live under an assumed name — but he’ll soon come to understand precisely how rampant the country’s corruption has become.
Cutting Through Rocks
Winner of Sundance's World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize, Cutting Through Rocks follows Sara Shahverdi — motorcyclist, midwife, and first-ever councilwoman elected in her Iranian village. A vérité triumph by Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni.
Fantasia
Walt Disney pushed the boundaries of animation and sound recording when he put together a movie concert: eight classical pieces by Bach, Beethoven, Stravinski et al, each animated in a different style. It's playful, sometimes cute, other times inspired.
Image: © Disney, 1940
The Baltimorons
An early Xmas present and the rom-com of the year: a dental emergency on Christmas Eve brings together flailing comedian Chris and cynical divorcee Didi for a series of low-key urban misadventures.
Credits
Producer
Maryna Er Gorbach, Mehmet Bahadir Er, Sviatoslav Bulakovskyi
Screenwriter
Maryna Er Gorbach
Cinematography
Sviatoslav Bulakovskyi
Original Music
Zviad Mgebry
Art Director
Marketa Korinkova-Taplin
Director
Photo by Rafal Nowak
Maryna Er Gorbach
After studying at the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University, Maryna Er Gorbach graduated from Andrzej Wajda Master School of Film Directing in Poland. Since 2017, Gorbach has been a member of the European Film Academy.
Filmography: Black Dogs Barking (2009); Love Me (2013); Omar and Us (2019)