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The orange-green glow of heat camera footage reveals a couple of figures, likely soldiers given their bulky clothing and weaponry, standing around a small trench. A prostrate body is dragged in and pitched into the shallow grave, shovelfuls of dirt slung over it.
The image is so alien it takes a minute to process its real horror â the blob representing the victim is glowing orange as the black earth gradually obscures it: he is being buried alive. Ukrainian director Valentyn Vasyanovychâs remarkable Venice 2019 Horizons winner Atlantis may immediately switch to exquisitely composed, live-action images of startlingly crisp, austere devastation but his filmâs most potent motifs are all established in this eerie, alien opening: war, death, callousness, heat and dirt.
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Vicarious Trips To Greece, Brazil, Japan And More Through Streaming Cinema
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This lack of travel has made me quite twitchy. Fortunately, I ve found a sort-of/not-quite solution making a great escape by watching a flurry of international films.
The California Film Institute and the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive are helping out wanderlusters like me, whisking us away from the same-oldness of our homebound lives via their choice offerings.
This week, Pass the Remote hopscotches vicariously to Brazil, Puerto Rico and on over to Greece, Japan and even tours a futuristic Ukraine.
Death is present in practically every moment of Ukrainian director Valentyn Vasyanovych’s “Atlantis.” This fact (as well as the deliberate pacing) doesn’t make the film an easy watch, but for the patient viewer, there are rewards to be found. Ukraine’s submission for this year s Academy Award for the Best International Feature Film (though it failed to make the final shortlist of 15 titles in contention for the prize), the film is undeniably bleak, though by its final moments even its desolation gives way to a faint ray of hope. click to enlarge PHOTO COURTESY GRASSHOPPER FILMS A scene from the Ukrainian drama Atlantis. The film is set in a bombed-out Ukraine of 2025, in the aftermath of Russia’s currently ongoing war against the country. The narrative pla