Direction: Valentyn Vasyanovych
Country: Ukraine
Atlantis, a product of the creative mind of writer/director/producer/editor/cinematographer Valentyn Vasyanovych, opens with a bird's-eye shot filtered with a thermography effect of a man being killed by three others and buried in a hole they previously dug. This incident happened somewhere within a delimited area in Ukraine that, in 2025, is considered unfit for humans, and dangerous due to water and soil contamination as well as multiple mines spread through former battlegrounds between Ukrainians and Soviets.
Sergyi (Andriy Rymaruk), a veteran soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, starts to find some peace under the grey skies of that same perimeter, right after the smelting plant where he was employed closes down. Although there’s not much to look at or do there, he volunteers in a program, whose goal is to exhume the bodies of war victims. Yet, the true reason for his rehabilitation isn’t the task itself, but Katya (Liudmyla Bileka), a woman with whom he dreams to live a better life.
At a first glance, this slow-burning indie might be referred to as a contemplation of the wrecked, but the gloomy inertness that haunts and afflicts us for most of its duration becomes ultimately winning. The low dynamics give the story an opaque narrative thread that becomes clearer as the clock keeps ticking, and the film shifts gears from an intriguingly morbid desolation (with scenes involving death, suicide and destructive anger) to a warm, hopeful love story.
With both the camera work and the atmosphere recalling the works of Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Andrei Tarkovsky, Atlantis is a rough film to sit through, but those who really pay attention to its existentialist musings will be rewarded.
