Andrey Svislotskiy

I find this one haunting. It has a distinct, sharp flavour. This kind of place, Bucha, Irpin, Vorzel, Hostomel and Brovary have a bitter familiarity to me, as do other city outskirts in Europe. They are somewhere between the rural world of secrets, mysterious powers, childhood enchantments with nature and the urban world, drier and more anonymous, where things and people disappear and stories become suffocated. It reminds me of Muratova's masterpiece "Among Grey Stones".

The surreal mixing of Boychukism and Ukrainian Poetic cinema also seduces me. There is a typically Ukrainian treatment of space. It is both alive and physical. There is a perversion of reality in Kovalyov's film that is stunning. The space feels both real, mythical and feverishly imagined.