Atlantis

It’s 2025, one year after the Ukraine-Russia war has ended, and former solider Sergey (newcomer Andriy Rymaruk) is struggling to adjust to life outside the military. Unable to sleep and beset by suicidal daydreams, he is clearly suffering from PTSD and shuffles through life as a factory worker at the nearby smelter. When the factory closes — the owners claim that it will be refurbished to accommodate new technologies — Sergey finds employment delivering drinking water to the region’s few remaining inhabitants. The decaying factories and mines have polluted the natural supply.

A chance roadside encounter with Katya (Liudmyla Bileka, also in her first role) brings Sergey into contact with Black Tulip, a volunteer organisation which travels the countryside exhuming bodies in an attempt to identify them, reunite them with relatives or, at the very least, give them a proper burial. Sergey volunteers to assist; a gesture that’s driven, at least in part, by a desire to atone for his actions. While the work is horrendous, its doing brings Sergey some kind of peace — and, as he and Katya grow closer, a chance, perhaps, for some small happiness.

As Sergey, newcomer Rymaruk is excellent. Scarred by his experiences to an almost wordless, and certainly joyless, existence, the actor conveys the character’s deep-seated traumas through an expressionless face and a resigned gait. Deeply moving sequences, such as his visit to the bombed-out the ruins of his former home, where he places a pair of children’s shoes carefully against a small devastated bed, are made all the more poignant by his emotional restraint. It’s a shame Katya is reduced to supporting love interest, for one suspects her story is at least as interesting as Sergey’s, but Bileka brings genuine depth and feeling to her limited amount of screen time.