Liturgy of Anti-tank Obstacles

The work of four Ukrainian sculptors provides a window through which to view the recently transformed nature of Ukraine in Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s unexpectedly moving, Liturgy of Anti-tank Obstacles. By depicting the changing relationship with the creative process and the subsequent output of the sculptors, the film pays tribute to the sacrifices that ordinary people have made to help defend their homeland. It acts as factual testimony as well as a somewhat philosophical reflection on the nature of making things and of the aesthetic and actual values of those things.

Very much an observational documentary in its visual style, the film opens with a sequence of anti-tank objects and the remains of the war machines defeated by them. They are strewn around images of Ukrainian urban locales while a liturgy plays over them. Here, the religious tone of the soundtrack seems to elevate the import and resonance of these defensive actions. Later, the interplay between sacrament and survival becomes all the more pronounced as Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk portrays the transition of his four sculptors – Roman Sova, Serhiy Danko, Andriy Holdiy, Orest Voytekhivskiy – from making casts of Cossaks, centurions, saints, and Christ himself, to fashioning Czech hedgehogs from steel girders. The audio shifts both in tandem with and in opposition to the subject. In some instances, the noise of manufacture accompanies the figure of Christ, in others the sound of ritual plays alongside the metalwork of resistance.

The contrasts are apparent on screen as well, particularly around the sculptors’ workshop, where the grind of iron being sawed happens in the foreground while a heroic-looking figure, cast in a marble-like white, watches in the background from atop a horse. It’s in these moments, when winches move both anti-tank obstacles and decorative statues, that the film seems to draw a direct line between these two completely different, and yet adjoining, endeavours. The Czech hedgehogs lined up along the workshop wall may not be visually appealing, but both the need for their existence and the labour of their creation elicit an acute emotional response. Synopses of the film describe a Ukraine that has two realities – before and after the war – and while Liturgy of Anti-tank Obstacles certainly presents that perspective, it also illustrates a continuum in which labour flows in the direction it is needed, and utility and beauty are both capable of conveying immense meaning.

Director, writer: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
Executive Producer: Soo-Jeong Kang
Producer: Daniel Lombroso
Cinematography: Kostiantyn KliatskinAndrii LysetskyiDmytro Sukholytkyy-SobchukDenys Vorontsov
Editing: Sergo Klepach
Sound: Mariia Nesterenko
Venue: Sarajevo (Competition – Documentary Films)
In Ukrainian
12 minutes