FILMS
One last job in deepest Ukraine; a coming-ofage tale in harrowing reverse; Norwegian hipsters skewered…
PAMFIR It’s a miracle that Dmytro Sukholytkyy- Sobchuk’s debut feature exists at all. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the film was still in production and the sound designer had to brave shelling to transfer the footage abroad so the film could be completed.
But regardless of its production or context, Pamfir is one of the great debuts of 2023, an eerie, brutal but compassionate tale of power, corruption and love. Oleskandr Yatsentyuk is magnificently hangdog (there’s something of Bernard Hill’s Yosser Hughes) as Leonid, known to everyone as Pamfir (the local word for rock), an ex-smuggler with a legendary shady past, who has made a fresh start as a well digger in Poland. He returns to his family home in a misty, muddy village in Bukovina, in the Carpathian forests of western Ukraine, for the Malanka new year festival – a pagan costume ritual, where people dress up as the creatures they really wish to be.