You're reading: Movie Critic: More tears than laughs at 42nd Molodist Film Festival

At the 42nd Molodist Film Festival, which kicked off on Oct. 24 and will wrap up on Oct. 28, moviegoers have an opportunity to compare student films, shorts from up-and-coming directors and features from some more well-known foreigners.

Three separate categories – international,
national and non-competition – ensure a variety of movies for
viewers to choose from.
I didn’t get to
watch every screening, (I saw only a half of the national shorts
contest program), but that was fine. Watching seven Ukrainian short
films in a row just might have sunk me into an autumn
depression. It almost seemed as if murder or highlighting someone’s
deep despair or poor life conditions was a required element to be a
part of the festival.

Two films in particular forced people to
smile and laugh in the darkness of the cinema, but five had the
audience shedding tears of sorrow.

“I hope you will feel the warmth of this
movie when watching it as we did while shooting it,” said director
Oleksandr Feshchenko before the screening of his film “The Boots.”
His was probably the only film that did pass its warmth on to the
audience. A short story
by Vasyl Shukshyn screened by Feshchenko
was more inspiring and optimistic than many of the others, even
though it was
less art house.

It is hard to say whether leaving with an
optimistic outlook on life is what cinema art or any other art is
supposed to be about. We should probably keep in mind that negative
feelings usually evoke much stronger emotions, and that’s what many
of the Ukrainian directors seemed to have focused on. A person
leaving the cinema hall with wet eyes almost always came from a
Ukrainian movie.

The top film of the
Ukrainian contest was Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi‘s “Nuclear Waste.”
Also a Locarno International Film Festival selection, the film was
neither sorrowful nor too optimistic. Absent of any dialogue, with
many static moments throughout, it looked more like a documentary
until a sex scene in the middle of the film.

The poetics of the
movie seem to be in the characters’ subtle glances
and facial expressions. But whether that’s enough to convey the
idea of love triumphing under any circumstances to a Ukrainian
audience is hard to say. Perhaps it’s
the answer to that question which defines the difference between
European and Ukrainian perception of cinema art.

Ukraine, Goodbye! Kyiv. 8 p.m. Hr 50

(Short film  “Nuclear Waste”by Myroslav Slaboshpytskyi will be shown as a  part of Ukraine, Goodbye! shorts series)

Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna
Shevchenko can be reached at
[email protected]