One day, Roman, Nastya, and their two children are enjoying a relaxing vacation in Tenerife. The next, Russia invades their homeland, Ukraine, and the world has shifted beneath their feet. Their newfound status as refugees insidiously, inexorably heightens the tensions typical of any family holiday. The war underwrites their every interaction. While trying to distract their young son and deal with their teenage daughter’s newfound rebellious streak, Roman and Nastya’s marriage is put to the test.
Elliptical in style but unflinchingly honest, this Polish-produced film effectively conveys the Ukrainian family’s maelstrom of emotions—grief, fear, confusion, animosity, depression, self-doubt, lust for revenge, and greater sympathy for other dispossessed strangers. Director Damian Kocur wields the absurdity of being in a holiday destination when your home is under siege to tremendous effect. His brilliant narrative gambit results in a truly unique and invaluable perspective on the Ukraine crisis.
Supported by
Sofia Berezowska, Roman Lutskyi, Anastasiia Karpienko, Fedir Pugachov
Poland
2024
In Ukrainian, Spanish, English, Russian, German and Wolof with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Mikolaj Lizut, Agnieszka Jastrzębska
Screenwriter
Damian Kocur, Marta Konarzewska
Cinematography
Nikita Kuzmienko
Editor
Alan Zejer
Production Design
Aleksandra Markowska
Damian Kocur
Damian Kocur is a director, scriptwriter, cinematographer, and a PhD student at the Łódź Film School. His debut feature film Bread and Salt (2022) was awarded the Special Jury Prize in the Orizzonti competition at the Venice Film Festival 2022, Cairo IFF, Antalya IFF, Cottbus Film Festival, and many more. His last short film As It Was was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2023.
Filmography: Bread and Salt (2022)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
NAZA
NAZA is a codeword euphemistically used by Israeli intelligence to indicate the number of civilians it expects will be killed in an airstrike. This chilling documentary exposes the policy and process of state-sanctioned mass killings.
Atonement
A former Marine suffering from PTSD seeks a meeting with the Iraqi family to which he did great wrong ten years earlier in the Gulf War. Atonement navigates challenging, politically-charged psychological territory with diligence and sensitivity.
The Sandbox
Borders are the faultlines of the world. Kenya-Jade Pinto's doc examines how modern surveillance technology, bio-metrics and AI are combining to make land and sea borders as impenetrable as air travel, and suggests the unspoken cost is our own humanity.
The Pervert's Guide to Ideology
Slavoj Zizek re-teams with director Sophie Fiennes for another wildly entertaining romp through the crossroads of cinema and philosophy. From The Sound of Music to Titanic, Jaws to The Dark Knight, Zizek offers new ways to understanding Hollywood.
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema
The Pervert's Guide to Cinema takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made (Hitchcock, Lynch, Tarkovsky et al). Serving as guide is Slavoj Zizek, the superstar Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst.
You Had to Be There
In a strange quirk of fate, the legendary Toronto '72 production of the musical comedy Jesus hit Godspell launched a constellation of comedy stars, all unknown at the time but now known to us as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Victor Garber, et al