2023/24 Season Membership: £70 / Guest Tickets – £12 (both available on the door)
Ukraine/France/Poland/Chile • Drama • Year: 2023 – Running time: 102 mins
Language: Ukrainian
Audience Response: 14 slips returned
- ‘Excellent’: 5 votes
- ‘Very Good’: 4 votes
- Good’: 2 votes
- ‘Satisfactory’: 2 votes
- ‘Poor’: 1 vote
Read the comments left here, or visit our “Pamfir” discussion page
Synopsis:
A gripping and moving crime drama from Ukraine. A man returns to his family after months of absence, on the eve of a traditional carnival. But, when his son burns down the local church, finds he has no other choice but to reconnect with his troubled past to make amends.
Debut feature-length film for Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
Visually striking and explosively violent, this simmering parable makes exceptional use of its rustic locations — and the faces of a vibrant cast — to reinforce a sense of authenticity.
David Parkinson (Empire Magazine)
Director/Writer: Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
Weightlifter (2018, short) / Boroda (2012, short) / Otrotstvo (2008, short)
Main Cast:
| Oleksandr Yatsentyuk | Leonid |
| Stanislav Potyak | Nazar |
| Solomiia Kyrylova | Olena |
| Oleksandr Yarema | Morda |
| Olena Khokhlatkina | The Mother |
| Miroslav Makoviychuk | The Father |
(for full cast list, additional technical information and reviews, please visit the Pamfir pages in IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes)
CFC Film Notes:
Set in the run-up to a traditional carnival in rural Western Ukraine, writer-director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s feature debut follows an eponymous ex-smuggler whose plans to go straight are thwarted by small-town corruption.
When Leonid (Oleksandr Yatsentyuk) returns to his home on the Ukrainian border after months abroad, he’s determined to earn an honest living, but his plans are quickly derailed by his teenage son Nazar’s (Stanislav Potyak) misguided actions. To set things right, Leonid has no choice but to take on a new and uniquely risky smuggling job, for a crime syndicate operating in a place where all the rules have changed.
Part drama, part thriller, part noir-inflected fairytale, Pamfir is violent, raw and bloody, but also a tender portrait of a family man trying to raise his son well despite his own checkered past. Shot in long takes and set amid forests swirling with mist in the run-up to the traditional ‘Malanka’ carnival – a wild pagan festival featuring straw costumes, wooden masks and centuries-old rites and traditions – it’s a propulsive, genre-defying debut that paints an elemental, unvarnished portrait of Ukraine.
Footnote: The film was in post-production when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Sound designer Oleksandr Verhovynets managed to transfer all material abroad, so that the editing of the film could be completed.