Movie reviews

FUSION FILM FESTIVALS - EAST EUROPE FILM FESTIVAL

Dan Hickford, director of the festival says this is an event which "puts a few festivals together".

NO-ONE

Watchable. Quite peculiar: theatrical, static. But also steamy or violent at times. The first instance of violence is predictable but shocking anyway. What's it about? About a man who's been at the top of state authority for decades, used to the fact that no one will question his power but suddenly both the coup and the loss of his wife mean a loss of the power he has always exerted. Since the film seems to conceal a bottom layer, I'd say you can interpret the romantic plot in the changing political situation - the fall of the USSR - as Ukraine's love affair with other countries.

According to the man who announced the screening, there are a few characters from Gogol and from "Master and Margarita" - I've read neither so can't comment. He attributes the plot to the Russian invasion on Crimea in 2014. The movie's Israeli-Ukrainian. According to one of the actors, a Russian movie can fill a room in Poland, not in Russia. Another actor discovers something new each time he watches it. Yet another one, the "general" from the picture views his protagonist as a man who decides to resolve things on his own and this way he becomes a monster. It's 100% fiction - clear to me but some doubted it. I asked the director, Vladimir Prudkin, why he made everyone act so theatrically and statically. In his opinion, "if you want to think you can't hurry".