October 1, 2022

Film screening:
"Amulet" (1991)
by Mykola Rasheiev

7.45 pm

The two brothers Petro and Andriy come from the province of Polissia to the capital to seek their fortune here. While Petro finds work and social ties right away, Andriy has a hard time looking for his place in the big city. After Petro suddenly dies, Andriy starts to replace him. But he quickly discovers that the road to success demands sacrifices. The setting of the fantastic-mystical, sometimes absurd events, which mix with the style of late-socialist realism, is Kyiv. Here a dark story unfolds, which tells not only of the political and social, but also the moral upheavals at the beginning of the 1990s.

The film "Amulet" (Оберіг / Oberih) is the last work of director Mykola Rasheiev, who during his life was known mainly for comedies. "Amulet", on the other hand, as a thriller, is not only an exception in the filmmaker's work. The horror genre is also a rarity within Ukrainian cinema. A particularly tense element is the key scene: it was shot in the midst of the actual demonstration for Ukraine's independence in 1990. In it, the historical reality is combined with the film history into which it found its way.

The film screening is curated by Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre in Kyiv.

Feature film, 91 min. // FSK 16
Language: Russian with English subtitles