Parched Land

Colour, 35 mm
Ukraine, 2004, 25 min
IP – International premiere
Section: East of the West - Out of Competition

Synopsis

Parched land broken up by iron structures. Here, a simple-minded water deliverer unexpectedly runs into a terribly pitiful angel with drooping wings, but there’s no communicating with him. He puts God’s messenger, now an apathetic wreck, into a cage in order to share him with his fellow countrymen. Crowds of people decked out in carnival gear rush to see the fairground curiosity, but the angel’s presence means nothing to them. Out of boredom they abandon themselves to jubilant merrymaking which soon develops into an uninhibited orgy.... This feature debut by a young director oscillates between fairground spectacle and the parable implied by the motif: a man found and killed his angel by rashly throwing him to a gluttonous crowd incapable of compassion, indifferent to mystery. The strange mystique and ambiguity of the event is strengthened by the poetic expression of the image.

About the director

Taras Tomenko (b. 1976, Kiev) graduated in philology from the National Taras Shevchenko University in Kiev and in film from the Kiev State Institute of Performing Arts. He created the successful shorts The Slaughterhouse (Boynya, 1999) and The Shooting Gallery (Tyr, 2001), the latter awarded at the Berlinale.