Ukraine, the birthplace of Dziga Vertov (of the 1929 silent masterpiece, The Man with a Camera) and of Resident Evil star Mila Jovovich, has a long film history, but until this year has never had a film in competition at Cannes.
The mystifying, wryly titled My Joy follows the misadventures of a long-distance truck driver named Georgy (Viktor Nemets) who takes a detour into a monstrously foul Russian village full of evil policemen, Second World War flashbacks, teenaged prostitutes and frequent knocks on the head. I wondered if it might be too obvious to assume that it was some sort of dark parable for contemporary Eastern European instability. It was a relief to learn I was close. The director, Sergei Loznitsa, confirms that, indeed, it is a "a dark parable about deep Russia."
Loznitsa, 45, trained as a mathematician, researching artificial intelligence and doing Japanese-to-Russian technical translation before he decided to go to film school. He has produced three full-length films and eight short documentaries in the past 10 years, during most of which time he has lived with his family in Germany.
This is the first feature for Loznitsa (who was, in fact, born in Belarus but raised in neighbouring Ukraine). His specialty has been assembling found footage of Soviet-era news and propaganda films, edited to an ambient soundtrack. Probably the most famous of these is Blockade, using archival footage of the German siege of Leningrad, during which 600,000 to 800,000 people died. The film played several international film festivals and screened at New York's Film Forum to postive reviews.
Naturally, Ukrainians are proud of this first feature entry at the world's most prestigious film festival.
"Our first film is going to Cannes," wrote Ukraine's largest newspaper Segodnya. "The world will see our films!"
In fact, Loznitsa has said it's unlikely My Joy would exist if he hadn't moved to Germany. Germany put up most of the €1.5-million budget (it's technically a German-Netherlands-Ukraine co-production), although the film had to be shot in Ukraine in exchange for support from the Ukrainian ministry of culture.
While the setting is supposed to be Russia, this is a pan-central-European affair. The cinematographer is Romania's Oleg Mutu, who shot the Palme d'or-winning Romanian feature 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Also from Romania is one of the actors, Vlad Ivanov, who played the abortionist in 4 Months and a police captain in another celebrated Romanian film, Police, Adjective. His dialogue had to be dubbed into Russian. The art director is Belarussian.
Whichever country gets top credit, My Joy is about experiences common to central European countries. The film is episodic, with actors appearing in different roles. There's a sense that this is a film about recurrence and the nightmare of history. Though from decade to decade the roles may reverse, the cruelty of the powerful toward the weak remains a constant.
Liam Lacey