In “Porcelain War,” a resilient Ukrainian couple divide their time between two seemingly antithetical pursuits: When enterprising Slava Leontyev isn’t training fellow civilian soldiers in the ongoing fight against Russia’s invasion, he and his partner Anya Stasenko are skilled ceramic artists, casting and painting dainty porcelain figurines inspired by local nature and folklore. If the title already suggests something pointed in that disparity, this emotive debut by Leontyev and American co-director Brendan Bellomo leaves nothing to chance in ensuring we get it: Porcelain, we are told, is “fragile but everlasting, and can be restored after hundreds of years.” Lest the point still be lost on us, the couple’s combined voiceover later offers a blunter paraphrase: “Ukraine is like porcelain — easy to break, but impossible to destroy.”
The metaphor is clear enough, then. Whether it’s quite complex enough to sustain a feature-length documentary is another question. “Porcelain War” thrives on contrast,...
The metaphor is clear enough, then. Whether it’s quite complex enough to sustain a feature-length documentary is another question. “Porcelain War” thrives on contrast,...
- 1/29/2024
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Newport, Rhode Island — A decade ago, Pete Seeger gave the organizers of the Newport Folk Festival a mission statement. “If you’re going to have the torch, I need to know you’re going to continue to give the people who need a voice the voice,” Jay Sweet, the long-running festival’s executive director, recalls the folk legend and festival co-founder telling him at Seeger’s final Newport appearance before his death in 2014.
What he meant was simple, according to Sweet. “My job,” he continues, “is to allow people to participate,...
What he meant was simple, according to Sweet. “My job,” he continues, “is to allow people to participate,...
- 7/28/2022
- by Kara Voght
- Rollingstone.com
Make room on the bench, Sergei Loznitsa (“Donbass”). Scoot along, Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy (“The Tribe”). It’s time to share the title of contemporary Ukraine’s most intriguing filmmaker with helmer Roman Bondarchuk, an erstwhile documentarian (“Ukrainian Sheriffs”), who makes a mesmerizing fiction debut with “Volcano.” An impressively shot drama marbled with welcome notes of absurdist comedy and wry humor, the movie is set in southern Ukraine’s Kherson province, just above Crimea, where a Kiev-based interpreter for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Osce) finds himself stranded after a series of misadventures. Following its world premiere in Karlovy Vary last July, the consistently involving film has screened at more than 30 international festivals and collected numerous kudos. Its Ukrainian theatrical rollout begins April 5.
Thirtysomething Lukas is driving three international Osce personnel on an inspection tour of military checkpoints when their SUV breaks down on a dirt road in the steppe.
Thirtysomething Lukas is driving three international Osce personnel on an inspection tour of military checkpoints when their SUV breaks down on a dirt road in the steppe.
- 4/5/2019
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
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