A character-driven social-protest drama set in modern-day Ukraine, documentary maker Christina Tynkevych’s emotionally wrenching fiction feature debut How is Katia? was shot in Kyiv before Russia’s bloody invasion, a fateful twist of history that could prove either an asset or a liability to its prospects. On one hand, Ukrainian cinema is enjoying heightened global attention right now, which should give this small but powerful film a welcome boost. Then again, a scalding dissection of ingrained corruption within Ukraine’s medical and legal system is not exactly what an embattled nation and its global supporters will be craving right now.
Fortunately, the points How is Katia? makes about power, money and injustice have pretty wide universal resonance, and could be applied specifically to many other countries. Indeed, Tynkevych has admitted taking direct inspiration from Romanian New Wave fiilm-makers like Cristian Mungui, who have been levelling this kind of caustic critique at their own political and social institutions for many years.
Expanded from Solatium, a 2016 short that Tynkevych made with the same lead actor, How is Katia? is an impressively confident debut and a welcome reminder that the rich canon of Ukrainian cinema has wider topics to address than the current horrors of war. World premiered in Locarno in August, it has already picked up multiple festival prizes. Screening this week in Thessaloniki, it will also plays in Stockholm and Cork this month alone. The timely Ukrainian context, festival acclaim and strong team of mostly female talents should boost its chances beyond the festival bubble.
How is Katia? opens with single mum Anna (Anastasia Karpenko, intense and magnetic) and her 11-year-old daughter Katia (Kateryna Kozlova) dancing to kitsch Europop in the hollow shell of their future apartment, a picture of hopeful joy in defiance of ongoing financial struggle. Hope is what this tiny family unit needs right now: their current domestic set-up is a crowded apartment shared with Anna’s sister (Tatyana Krulikovskaya) and increasingly bewildered mother (Yelena Khokhlatkina). In her high-pressure job as a paramedic, Anna also deals with visceral horror on a routine basis, from fishing suicidal teenagers out of blood-stained bathwater to picking up broken bodies from drunken street brawls. She is also having a secret affair with a married man (Aleksey Cherevatenko) who becomes increasingly shifty and elusive in her hour of deepest need.
Inevitably, Anna’s bright new future proves illusory. On her way to school one morning, Katia is struck down by a car driven by 18-year-old Marina (Tatiana Ostretsova), the whole nightmarish scenario witnessed by her mother from a moving bus in a superbly orchestrated single-shot sequence. As a medic herself, Anna is aghast to discover how much the quality of her comatose daughter’s hospital treatment in intensive care is determined by bribes and favours, underhand deals and inside connections.
When tragedy strikes and Katia dies, a devastated Anna faces an even tougher struggle to bring criminal charges against Marina, whose mother Irina (Iryna Verenych-Ostrovska) is a prominent political player and aspiring mayoral candidate. Adding insult to injury, Irina’s heavy-handed lawyers try to pressure an incandescent Anna to agree a financial settlement and drop the charges. Then the police officer in charge of pursuing the case does the same, warning Anna she does not have “enough money or power” to win a court battle. “Have you been offered anything?” he asks her. “Have you?” she angrily fires back.
In its latter stages, How is Katia? turns bleaker still, with betrayal piled upon betrayal, eventually forcing a traumatised Anna into a desperate act of random vengeance against a blindly cruel universe. This downward spiral hardly makes for a fun watch but it is grimly compelling, superbly acted and emotionally piercing. In these scenes Vladislav Voronin’s dynamic, flowing, largely hand-held camerawork becomes noticeably more unbalanced and distorted, the dialogue full of charged pauses and silent screams, and the music-free audio mix flooded with sense-warping, disquieting sound design. The nuanced message that Tynkevych leaves audiences mulling over is not just a familiar affirmation of how power corrupts, but also how lack of power can be equally corrupting when the powerless are cheated out of justice.
Director: Christina Tynkevych
Screenwriters: Christina Tynkevych, Serhiy Kastornykh, Julia Gonchar, Natalia Blok
Cast: Anastasia Karpenko, Kateryna Kozlova, Tatiana Ostretsova, Iryna Verenych-Ostrovska, Tatyana Krulikovskaya, Aleksey Cherevatenko
Cinematography: Vladislav Voronin
Editing: Alex Shamin, Oleksandr Chorny
Producers: Olha Matat, Vlad Dudko, Serhiy Konnov
Production company: Evos Film (Ukraine)
World sales: Coccinelle
Venue: Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Out of competition)
In Ukrainian
102 minutes
