Klondike (Klondaik)

This screening took place on Tuesday, February 14, 2023 at 7:00 pmYukon Theatre

Directing Award: World Cinema Dramatic, Sundance 2022

Maryna Er Gorbach’s film is set in the Donbass region of Ukraine, and its depiction of war has a grim topicality today. 

The story of a Ukrainian family living on the border of Russia and Ukraine during the start of the war. Irka refuses to leave her house even as the village gets captured by armed forces. Caught between Russian separatists on one hand and the expectation of loyalty to Ukraine, the couple tries to balance the urgent, conflicting demands of civil war, and it’s no easy task.

Shot in elaborately choreographed long takes, Klondike is a feat of intricate staging, and Er Gorbach uses unity of space to illustrate the ever-growing divisions among her characters. Tense, haunting, and tragic, this is a truly powerful work of art.

In Ukrainian, Russian, Chechen, and Dutch with English subtitles.