For his debut feature, Pamfir, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk has returned to the subject of the regional pagan festival, Malanka, about which he previously made a mid-length documentary, Krasna Malanka (2013). On this occasion, the Malanka celebration of a western Ukrainian town provides the backdrop for a gripping, muscular drama that explores the world of small-time smuggling, corrupt local politics, and the struggle to support a family when criminality seems to be the only business in town. Told from the perspective of a father returning home after working abroad, Pamfir is built around the imposing frame of first-time actor Oleksandr Yatsentyuk, who delivers an irresistible performance, impressively combining paternal tenderness and an explosive potential for violence.
Leonid (Yatsentyuk) – nicknamed “Pamfir” – is only home from his job in Poland for a couple of weeks to visit his adoring family; wife Olena (Solomiya Kyrylova) and son Nazar (Stanislav Potiak). When Nazar sets light to his father’s papers, in a ploy to keep him in town long enough for the Malanka festival, he accidentally burns down the local church and Leonid finds himself dipping back into the lawless life he left behind in order to clear the debt. Given its narrative beats, it would be understandable to categorise this as a run-of-the-mill crime drama – the petty thief planning on going straight after one last job is pulled back into the fray – but that would be to undersell Pamfir’s bounty of riches. Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s intimate knowledge of the local people, and the perfect sprinkling of such textural details throughout the script, give the film an almost ethnographic quality in amongst the bargains, brawls, and betrayals.
The film’s opening scene – in which Leonid and his brother both hide within a striking festival costume to surprise their mother – sets out the stall early, and both ancient and modern customs are deeply ingrained in the film’s themes and structure. Corruption, of both the personal and political varieties, is rife. Manifested in the forms of a weaselly, vindictive local policeman and the provincial official who is as adept at running an iron-fisted contraband operation as he is greasing palms and kissing babies, inhabit a world that Leonid is desperate to keep his family – most notably Nazar – from becoming embroiled in. The Malanka festival’s focus on the nature of masculine competition, a boy’s transition into manhood, and the power to become whatever you wish to be all feed into the responsibility and anxiety Leonid feels to and for his son. Even in a film punctuated with acts of barbarism, it is the interactions of the family unit – both Kyrylova and Potiak are also performing in their first features – that make for the most compelling viewing.
The visuals seem to owe a lot to several schools of roving European cinematography, Nikita Kuzmenko’s lens constantly tracking the action. The motion is graceful as it pans and weaves around the actors, but it also gives the screen a level of thrumming energy that imitates that of Leonid himself, whose body bristles after taking booster pills that allow him to run and fight longer and harder than others. Whether the camera is following behind him or stalking alongside as he trudges and cycles around the town, he feels like he has to keep moving, sharklike, to survive, and the frame moves with him. Even in moments where it doesn’t, when it rests for a breath or lingers on detail, there is often someone travelling within its scope.
If anything, the primary qualm with Pamfir is the abruptness of its ending. This world could so easily be the canvas for a sprawling, television series like The Wire, but, in fact, its denouement is a perfect confluence of the various themes that have been percolating throughout the film’s runtime; manhood, power, respect, self-determination, renewal. Pamfir is not about a world filled with never-ending stories, it is about cycles. Whether that is the passing of the torch between generations, the persistence of exploitation and corruption, or the recurrence of traditional rites of passage, the world keeps on turning.
Director, screenplay: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
Cast: Oleksandr Yatsentyuk, Stanislav Potyak, Solomiya Kyrylova
Producers: Aleksandra Kostina, Jane Yatsuta, Laura Briand, Bogna Szewczyk, Laudia Smieja-Rostworowska, Giancarlo Nasi
Cinematography: Nikita Kuzmenko
Editing: Nikodem Chabior
Sound: Serhiy Stepanskyy, Matthieu Deniau
Music: Laëtitita Pansanel-Garric
Art Direction: Ivan Mykhailov
Production company: Bosonfilm (Ukraine), Les Films d’Ici (France), Madants (Poland), Quijote Films (Chile), Mainstream pictures (Ukraine), Wady Films (Luxembourg), Moderator Inwestycje (Poland), Studio Orlando (France), Soilfilms (Germany)
Venue: Karlovy Vary (Horizons)
In Ukrainian, Russian
107 minutes
