Malanka, morality and life at the border. What is the Ukrainian Pamfir about?

Pamfir received the largest number of awards at the National Film Critics' Award Kinokolo - 5 out of 10. Pamfir also won the Grand Prix at the Cairo International Film Festival and the Grand Prix at the Molodist International Film Festival and was presented at festivals in Rotterdam and Karlovy Vary. 

Together with the director of Pamfir and a film critic, we discuss the film's main messages.

Svidomi is a media partner of the film.

The story of Leonid's family, nicknamed Pamfir, is at the centre of the plot. The man goes abroad to work and tries to build a bright future for his family. His wife Olena and teenage son Nazar will wait for him at home. 

Pamfir returns home. In an attempt to find money to compensate his son for his losses and prepare documents to return to work, Leonid turns to illegal activities, incurring the wrath of the local criminal mastermind Morda.

The film director Dmytro Sukholytkyi-Sobchuk notes that an important aspect is a place in the timeline: "It was 2016-2017 before Petro Poroshenko signed the agreement that granted us visa-free travel. It was a reflection of where we wanted to go. So there remains a kind of irony: de jure, we are moving towards the European Union, but in fact, we are almost the same."

The setting is a village in Bukovyna near the Ukrainian-Romanian border. It is from this geography that another of the main themes emerges: smuggling, the law, its violation and retribution.  

"Local newspapers in Bukovyna or Zakarpattia regularly publish news related to smuggling. It is part of the existence of all border areas because we live on the same legal plane (with the European Union - ed.), which entails economic components with different potentials. For example, you can earn several hundred hryvnias on a regular pack of cigarettes, and if you multiply it by a dozen cartons, it's a quick buck. These are the gaps in the legislation, the legal system and our state's position," the Pamfir film director explains. 

Another social phenomenon in the western regions is the problem of labour migration. Film critic Ihor Kromf says that Pamfir's fate - earning money or smuggling — is the choice of many people from border settlements. So it is a social drama.

"For Pamfir, his earnings abroad are not only a way to support his family. On the contrary, he has less money when he quits smuggling. Moreover, working abroad is a form of atonement for his sins. Hard work, life without a home, longing for his family — this is the price Pamfir pays to be law-abiding," the film critic explains.  

Kromf believes that life at the border is the film's central message. In many ways, it speaks more globally than the context of Bukovyna. People who live there are constantly forced to cross the border: it's not just about the physical state border but also about more metaphysical things. 

Throughout the film, Pamfir crosses the border between good and evil, paganism and Christianity, dignity and family security.

Apart from being a crime drama, Pamfir is also a family drama. The film depicts a conflict between three generations, with Pamfir at the centre: on the one hand, a confrontation with his father, and on the other, his son growing up neglected. 

Behind the first conflict lies a story from the past, and behind the second one — the future. The protagonist, in the midst of a family drama, tries to save his family. The film director highlights the side effect of love as one of the film's central issues.

"One of the issues is the distance when parents want the best for their children, so they go abroad. Then the relationship breaks down, and distance appears difficult to overcome. Entire generations had felt what it's like when parents wanted to give them the best, get wealth, build a house, to earn money for university. Still, it turns out that there is no emotional connection," says Sukholytkyi-Sobchuk.

The issue of morality in the film, as Ihor Kromf says, is so complex that professional ethics researchers can easily consider it. 

Understandings of morality from the point of view of Christianity, gangster concepts and universal values intersect here. They all come together in the image of Pamfir, who, on the one hand, has a simple code of ethics, and on the other hand, is a complex eclectic formed in a diverse environment. 

All his truths are simple and straightforward, but if you look at the character in the context of the environment that shaped him, the roots of understanding these truths go back to unexpected origins. 

Another theme is the protagonists' existence in a dual environment between Christianity and paganism. As the film director says, faith is something that everyone individually defines as a necessary need. 

In each character, you can determine their religious views, how they engage in spiritual life, and how they struggle spiritually with themselves and their circumstances. 

"All the characters in Pamfir talk to God. And this conversation is not canonical between a slave and Master, as the Bible commands. It is rather a conversation between two partners or neighbours. 

It brings Pamfir closer to Martin Scorsese's early works, for example, Evil Streets, where all the Italian-American gangsters are devout Catholics. Still, at the same time, professional sinners and their conversations with God in the church are similar to those of partners. 

Similarly, the characters in Pamfir, being believers, talk about smuggling: "What is a sin for one is a profit for another," the film critic comments.

The film's events unfold on the eve of Malanka, and the celebration is the culmination. Malanka is a festival that came from pagan times. It is a kind of ritual of rebirth, a dance of death and life. In Bukovyna, Malanka is often the starting point from which the year starts — it is an outburst and release of energy. 

"Malanka acts as a hot core that moves like tectonic plates in the story of the main characters and serves as a backdrop against which the main events take place," says the film director.

The film critic notes that such a folk festival could play in several ways. For example, it became a plot driver, something that could attract additional interest from the viewer and give an original visualisation to the crime drama. 

Dmytro Sukholytkyi-Sobchuk did a lot of research and combined elements, details and attributes inherent in different villages where Malanka festivities take place: Beleluia, Vazhkivtsi and Krasna (Krasnoilsk).

"I wouldn't want to tell the audience what the film is about, so they don't get the impression of a certain unambiguity and don't reduce everything to one constant. Instead, the film is so multilayered that everyone can find their answer while watching it," says the film director.

You can find this answer starting March 23 in Ukrainian cinemas. The film also occasionally runs abroad, so check with your local cinema.