Irma Vitovska

Twenty-five-year-old Vadym earns a living recording and selling all kinds of different sounds; nevertheless, he’d rather exchange his life in Kyiv for a better future in far-flung Canada. Thus, when he gets a generous job offer which might help him realise his dream, he jumps at the chance; he soon sets off to record the sounds of animals indigenous to Ukraine and also a rare bird native to the Carpathians. The situation proves somewhat more complicated when Vadym’s companion on the trip turns out to be his mother… To the sounds of a synthesized music score, debuting Ukrainian director Antonio Lukich unfolds a visually creative road movie, in which he demonstrates a highly unusual talent for constructing tragicomic situations.

The plot revolves around the controversial relationship between maid Stefania Chornenko and blueblood Adelia Anger against the backdrop of the provincial Austro-Hungary in 1900. Both Stefania’s parents and Adelia’s mother died during the fire. Adelia’s father adopted neighbors’ orphan. Girls grew up together to become as close as sisters, though Stefania served as the maid. This attachment develops into love-trap: on one hand full of mutual manipulation and jealousy, but equally based on сare and devotion. The illusion of balance is broken when Adelia marries sculptor Petro. Everything gets even more complicated when Joseph, the old love interest of Stefa, returns to town as the priest and married man. Illusions are destined to evaporate and reality comes into focus.

Inside the Chornobyl exclusion zone Grandma Prisa, the family matriarch, consorts with water nymphs, eats a diet filled with hallucinogenic mushrooms, and claims to have personally stabbed 12 SS soldiers to death during World War II. She lives together with her divorced and chronically ill daughter Slava and grandson Vova. Unexpectedly, their measured life comes to an end - Grandma Prisa receives a mystical warning about an impending catastrophe.