When the trees fall
| The story unfolds in a provincial Ukrainian setting. It revolves around rebellious five-year-old Vitka, Vitka’s teenage cousin Larysa and Larysa’s boyfriend, a young criminal who goes by the name of Scar. Woven together into one aesthetic background are the folk beliefs of the local residents, the harshness of nature and the rampant crime of the chaotic post-Soviet era.
The recent death of her father has thrown Larysa’s future into disarray. Her grandmother and mother are pressuring her to marry a local by the name of Roman. They see him as someone “reliable” with whom to create a patriarchal family. But Larysa wants a different life, even if her love for Scar is condemned by the entire community. Larysa and Scar plot their escape. They want get away from their relatives and from a life of crime and banal devastation. But in the process of collecting debts, Scar and his henchmen accidentally murder a man and his young son. The boys plan to take Larysa and flee to Poland and put themselves out of the reach of local crime bosses. This story is revealed to us through the eyes of the little girl Vitka. As a child, she believes everything is possible. |
written by Marysia Nikitiuk
director of photography Michał Englert, Mateusz Wichłacz
music Mykyta Moiseiev, Aleksandar Pejovski
production design Vlad Dudko
costume design Kostyantyn Kravets
make-up Tetyana Khoroshun, Tetyana Bovt
sound Oleksandr Shatkivskyi
edited by Blaze Dulev, Milenia Fielder, Ivan Bannikov
casting director Alla Samoilenko
cast Anastasia Pustovit, Sonya Khalaimova, Maksym Samchyk, Maria Svizhinska, Petro Pastukhov, Mariia Trepikova, Yevgenii Grygoriev, Aelita-Viktoriia Avierman, Alla Samoylenko, Ivan Blindar
production Directory Films, Solar Media Entertainment (Ukraina); Message Film (Polska); Fokus IN (Macedonia)
producers Igor Savychenko, Roman Klympush, Volodymyr Fillipov, Serge Lavrenyuk (Ukraina); Dariusz Jabłoński, Violetta Kamińska, Izabela Wójcik (Polska); Darko Basheski (Macedonia)
