Valentyn Vasyanovych's Atlantis is exclusively showing on Mubi starting May 4, 2021 in many countries in the series Viewfinder.By 2017, the conflict with Russia in the Ukrainian territory had lasted for almost three years. My colleagues had shot several feature films about the conflict, mostly genre pieces. I also understood that this war was the most relevant topic and that I had to film it. When I started writing the script, I realized that I could not distance myself from the traditional dramatic structures. Nor from the set of characters with the protagonist being a friend and the antagonist being the enemy. My film turned out to be a standard military drama, no different from the films that have already been made. At some point, I came across information about the catastrophic deterioration of the water quality in the occupied territories; Predictions indicated that this crisis would eventually become an irreversible...
- 5/7/2021
- MUBI
“Atlantis” is a mythology long lost, yet fascination with its deluge persists—if not merely as an archaeological epithet—in Valentyn Vasyanovych’s new film of the same name. This referent is multivalent: “Atlantis” also alludes to the Ukrainian national icon (a trident) adopted as the coat of arms in 1992 in the aftermath of independence against what remained of the Soviet Union. The 2014 Russia-Ukraine war is another lineage of this film’s atmosphere. Catalyzed by the “Euromaiden” protests, civilian crowds rioted against the Ukraine government for their perceived hesitancy in joining Europe, instead exhibiting leniency towards Russia. Although geopolitical and cultural intermediary, Vasyanovych’s Ukraine bears little resemblance to the civilizing project of either Europe or Russia, West or East—and is instead positioned between redemption and collapse.
At the end of another Russia-Ukraine war, a speculative decade after 2014, Vasyanovych’s Atlantis brings no resolution to the conclusion of conflict.
At the end of another Russia-Ukraine war, a speculative decade after 2014, Vasyanovych’s Atlantis brings no resolution to the conclusion of conflict.
- 2/8/2021
- by Leo Zausen
- The Film Stage
Set in 2025, Ukraine’s post-apocalyptic International Feature Film Oscar entry Atlantis imagines life — and death — in the country one year after the ongoing war with Russia has ended. Sergiy (Andriy Rymaruk) and his friend Ivan (Vasyl Antoniak) both suffer from Ptsd, and lead joyless lives shooting at targets and working in a steel factory. When the factory is closed down by its British owner, Sergiy ends up driving a water truck around the barren landscape.
Everyone he encounters is dealing with death, whether they are searching for landmines or long-dead corpses. Katya (Liudmyla Bileka) is a former archaeologist who exhumes bodies and tries to identify them. She sees her new role as “digging up your own history.” A bond forms between her and Sergiy, giving a glimmer of hope.
In his fifth feature, which won the Venice Horizons top prize in 2019 and was released in the U.S. by Grasshopper Film last week,...
Everyone he encounters is dealing with death, whether they are searching for landmines or long-dead corpses. Katya (Liudmyla Bileka) is a former archaeologist who exhumes bodies and tries to identify them. She sees her new role as “digging up your own history.” A bond forms between her and Sergiy, giving a glimmer of hope.
In his fifth feature, which won the Venice Horizons top prize in 2019 and was released in the U.S. by Grasshopper Film last week,...
- 1/28/2021
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
Valentyn Vasyanovych earned notoriety as the cinematographer behind 2014’s “The Tribe,” but he finds a confident voice all his own as a director with “Atlantis,” his third feature as such but his most striking to date. Conjuring a bombed-out, postwar Ukraine in 2025, the film’s crumbling world eerily mirrors our own, and is barely distant enough to qualify as speculative fiction. Unfolding across austerely shot (by Vasyanovych himself) tableaux with ruinous production design that brings to mind the industrially fed-on environments of the “Fallout” video games or even Tarkovsky’s “Stalker,” “Atlantis” is a political howl from the soul about a decaying Europe. But
The biggest stretch of the imagination here is that the conflict between Russian and Ukraine has superficially ended, but its trickling, traumatic effects still linger. Especially for former soldier Sergey (Andriy Rymaruk), who nows toils in a foundry, addled by Ptsd. In the open shot of the film,...
The biggest stretch of the imagination here is that the conflict between Russian and Ukraine has superficially ended, but its trickling, traumatic effects still linger. Especially for former soldier Sergey (Andriy Rymaruk), who nows toils in a foundry, addled by Ptsd. In the open shot of the film,...
- 1/22/2021
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Atlantis Trailer — Valentyn Vasyanovych‘s Atlantis (2019) movie trailer has been released by Grasshopper Film and stars Andriy Rymaruk, Liudmyla Bileka, Vasyl Antoniak, Aykhan Hajibayli, Vagif Ogly, and Kateryna Popravka. Crew Valentyn Vasyanovych wrote the screenplay for Atlantis. Vasyanovych crafted the cinematography for the film. Vasyanovych conducted the film editing on the film. Plot Synopsis Atlantis‘s plot synopsis: [...]
Continue reading: Atlantis (2019) Movie Trailer: A Ptsd Soldier befriends a Volunteer Following Ukraine’s Victory over Russia...
Continue reading: Atlantis (2019) Movie Trailer: A Ptsd Soldier befriends a Volunteer Following Ukraine’s Victory over Russia...
- 12/31/2020
- by Rollo Tomasi
- Film-Book
"Due to the war, this territory became completely unsuitable for living." Grasshopper Film has released an official US trailer for an acclaimed, award-winning Ukrainian sci-fi drama titled Atlantis, which originally premiered at last year's Venice & Toronto Film Festivals. Set in Eastern Ukraine in 2025, the film is about a soldier suffering from Ptsd who befriends a young volunteer hoping to restore peaceful energy to a brutally war-torn society. The film is Ukraine's official Best International Film submission this year for the Academy Awards, and it also won the Venice Horizons Best Film Award in 2019, and a few other film festival prizes. Starring Andriy Rymaruk, Liudmyla Bileka, and Vasyl Antoniak. This received rave reviews, saying that it's "sensitively observed and meticulously crafted. A remarkable piece of filmmaking from an exciting emerging Eastern European voice." It definitely looks bleak, but also seems powerfully optimistic in a way. Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Valentyn Vasyanovych's Atlantis,...
- 12/30/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
New York-based distribution company Grasshopper Film has acquired North American rights to Valentyn Vasyanovych’s sci-fi drama “Atlantis,” Ukraine’s official selection for next year’s Academy Awards.
Represented in international markets by Belgian sales group Best Friend Forever, “Atlantis” played at Toronto, Rotterdam and Venice, where it won the best film award in the Horizons Competition. The critically acclaimed film was also selected for New Directors/New Films.
The movie, which is expected to be released theatrically early next year, is set in 2025. Eastern Ukraine in a desert unsuitable for human habitation and water is an expensive commodity brought by trucks. As a wall is being built on the border, Sergiy, a former soldier, is having trouble adapting to this new reality. He meets Katya while on the Black Tulip mission dedicated to exhuming war corpses. Together, they try to return to some sort of normal life in which...
Represented in international markets by Belgian sales group Best Friend Forever, “Atlantis” played at Toronto, Rotterdam and Venice, where it won the best film award in the Horizons Competition. The critically acclaimed film was also selected for New Directors/New Films.
The movie, which is expected to be released theatrically early next year, is set in 2025. Eastern Ukraine in a desert unsuitable for human habitation and water is an expensive commodity brought by trucks. As a wall is being built on the border, Sergiy, a former soldier, is having trouble adapting to this new reality. He meets Katya while on the Black Tulip mission dedicated to exhuming war corpses. Together, they try to return to some sort of normal life in which...
- 11/17/2020
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
In Valentyn Vasyanovych’s post-apocalyptic Atlantis, the sky above Ukraine hangs like a sheet of steel, a uniform mass of clouds bucketing water onto the mud-covered wasteland down below. The year is 2025, and the country has just emerged victorious–if shattered–from a war with Russia. It’s a conflict all too steeped in the decade’s real-life skirmishes between Ukraine and its neighbor to come across as strictly fictional, and that’s the thing that makes Atlantis so disturbing. It’d be tempting to call Vasyanovych’s a dystopia, were it not for that fact that, all through its 108 minutes, everything about it feels almost unbearably vivid–closer to some news report or a post-conflict documentary than any artificial rendition thereof. There are soldiers gingerly plucking mines out of fields, foreign NGOs fretting about the country’s recovery, unidentified corpses exhumed and re-buried, and shell-shocked veterans struggling to find...
- 11/15/2019
- by Leonardo Goi
- The Film Stage
“It took you 10 years to cleanse this region of Soviet propaganda and myths,” says one character to another in “Atlantis,” going on to suggest that the devastation now left behind may never be “cleansed” at all. A strikingly bleak vision of a near future in which Ukraine has won its war with Russia but been left in ruins, this almost abstract drama by multi-hyphenate Valentyn Vasyanovych nabbed the top prize in Venice’s Horizons section.
Its cryptic, rigorously minimalist progress will test the patience of many viewers and present a challenge for commercial placements. Still, this is — not just the Ukraine’s, as this largely depoliticized statement is one of universal relevance.
The only direct we glimpse we get of the war is a chilling opening infrared view of a man being clubbed, then dumped into the grave he’s just been forced to dig. Like much of “Atlantis,” this is a sequence sans backstory,...
Its cryptic, rigorously minimalist progress will test the patience of many viewers and present a challenge for commercial placements. Still, this is — not just the Ukraine’s, as this largely depoliticized statement is one of universal relevance.
The only direct we glimpse we get of the war is a chilling opening infrared view of a man being clubbed, then dumped into the grave he’s just been forced to dig. Like much of “Atlantis,” this is a sequence sans backstory,...
- 9/16/2019
- by Dennis Harvey
- Variety Film + TV
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