Klondike (2022 film)

Klondike (Клондайк) is a 2022 Ukrainian drama film written, directed, and edited by Maryna Er Gorbach. The film stars Oksana Cherkashyna as a pregnant woman living near the Ukrainian-Russian border during the Russo-Ukrainian War and the shooting of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Klondike premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2022, where it won the World Cinema Dramatic Competition for directing. At the Berlin International Film Festival, it won the second place in Panorama Audience Award category. This film was selected as the Ukrainian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards.

Plot
The film focuses on the story of a local Ukrainian family trapped at the epicenter of the crash of MH17. The actions unfold on July 17, 2014, in the village of Grabove, Donetsk region, near the Russian border. The protagonists Irina and Anatoly are expecting their first child, as the war brutally invades their lives, along with the wreckage of a downed Boeing. The woman refuses to evacuate, even when armed groups occupy the village.

Cast

 * Oksana Cherkashyna as Irka
 * Serhiy Shadrin as Tolik
 * Oleg Shcherbina as Yurik, Irka's younger brother

Film crew

 * Director — Maryna Er Gorbach
 * Screenwriter — Maryna Er Gorbach
 * Cinematographer — Sviatoslav Bulakovsky
 * Art Directors — Maria Denisenko, Vitaly Sudarkov, Andrew Grechishkin
 * Composer — Zviad Mgebrishvili
 * Sound director — Sergeant Kurpiel
 * Costume designer — Victoria Filipova
 * Makeup artist — Ksenia Galchenko
 * Producers — Maryna Er Gorbach, Svyatoslav Bulakovsky, Mehmet Bahadir Er

Film production
The film project won the 11th State Cinema Competition held by Ukrainian State Film Agency. Additionally, in May 2021, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey supported film production. The budget accounted for ₴25.9 million. The casting was guided by Tanya Simon. Bosnian sound director Serjan Kurpiel and Georgian composer Zviad Mgebrishvili were also involved in the project. Under the terms of cooperation, 90% of post-production took place in Turkey.

Critical response
Klondike has an approval rating of 96% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 28 reviews, and an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's critical consensus states: "Klondike offers a bleak portrait of a war-torn Ukrainian village with the mordant wit of someone who understands that for civilians, the mundanities of life must go on". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 74 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews".