Oxygen Starvation / Kysnevyi holod

Army “gramps” are about to be demobilized and, as “tradition” calls it, they decide to haze the new recruits. However, not everyone is willing to submit and endure. Private Bilyk is pushing back. He not only opposed the practice but also tried to uphold his dignity, particularly his national one. His resistance triggers even greater aggression, and his devotion to his principles gradually grows into a real test of resilience.

One of the first Ukrainian films of the Independence era, Oxygen Starvation, is the debut and only film by director Andrii Donchyk,  a graduate of the Karpenko-Kary University. Before making this film, Donchyk had worked on the set of Straw Bells by Yurii Illienko and directed a short film Death of the Gods, which was presented at the prestigious festival in Clermont-Ferrand, France.

The script for Oxygen Starvation was written at the proposal of the director by the then young writer Yurii Andrukhovych. It was based on Andrukhovych’s and Donchyk’s memories of their own military conscription service. It took about three years to make the film. Initially due to censorship remarks on the script, and then due to numerous financial problems.

Oxygen Starvation is one of the first Ukrainian films made with private funds. Among its investors was the Ukrainian-Canadian company Kobza (this company also supported the film Swan Lake. The Zone by Yurii Illienko) and a Ukrainian fish farm. The fish farm company allocated one million rubles for shooting, hoping to make a profit from the box office. However, when the film was completed, it failed at the box office, and the film never found its audience in Ukraine.

In 1992, Oxygen Starvation was shown at the Venice Film Festival in the Critics’ Week program, where it won an award from the Italian film critics’ association. Later, Andrii Donchyk’s film was shown at dozens of other world festivals.

The main role in the film was played by actor Taras Denysenko. The role of his antagonist was played by Oleksii Horbunov, an actor who in the 90s managed to play in dozens of Ukrainian films (usually typecast as a negative character), thus becoming one of the most recognizable faces of young Ukrainian cinema of that decade. Also, in the film appeared Alexandr Mironov, a star of the cult film of the Perestroika Era Little Vera, who later played the main role in Dandelion Blossom by Oleksandr Ihnatusha.