A film of overwhelming topicality

By Michael Zollner

A grenade hit in the night. Noise. Irka and Tolik’s house sinks into a sea of ​​dust. More destruction, more fear.

An artillery piece had already partially destroyed their home, and a wall is missing in the living room. Irka and Tolik are now looking through a gaping hole directly at the Donbas landscape, at their homeland, where they do some farming and where the heavily pregnant Irka wants to give birth to her child.

And they look at the war that Russian separatists are waging at the behest of Putin. The fighting has now arrived in the middle of her life. But how do you escape war when it’s already happening in your own home?

Director Maryn Er Gorbach’s film “Klondike” tells a visually stunning and moving story of how Irka and her husband Tolik struggle for their future. He urges her to flee, she is unsure, wants to continue living her old life until her brother comes from Kyiv and accuses Tolik of having come to terms with the separatists.

The BZ is proud to be able to present this year’s BZ Culture Prize to the extraordinary director Maryn Er Gorbach. Your film shows how war is penetrating everyday life and taking possession of it. The director lets us experience the suffering of the local people. Above all, however, the film convinces with a strong female character, an overwhelming topicality and a rare power of the images.

“Klondike” deserves a big audience. Because the very convincing film shows that Putin’s war of aggression did not begin on February 24, 2022, but has been raging since 2014.

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