Atlantis / Atlantyda

The events of the film unfold in 2025, a year after Ukraine’s victory in the war with Russia and the return of the occupied eastern territories. Now these lands are completely unfit for life, and any change here seems impossible. At the same time, former soldier Serhii, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, is trying to adapt to the new reality. After losing his job at the factory, he starts working with a humanitarian mission that searches for and exhumes the remains of fallen soldiers. Here he meets Katia and realizes that a better future is still possible.

Atlantis combines the principles of feature film and documentary film and continues the style created by the director in his previous work, Black Level. The director leans on the usage of beautiful static frames in which the characters exist, the leisurely rhythm of the story, and the inclusion in the script of real-life facts from the biographies of the lead actors. The leading roles in the film were played by former scout Andrii Rymaruk and paramedic Liudmyla Bileka — non-professional actors who played themselves, recreating the history of their own relationship.

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it won the second most prestigious competition — Horizons. Later, Atlantis was shown at dozens of prestigious film festivals and was submitted by Ukraine for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category.