The Ukrainian premiere of a psychological thriller Inside by Vasilis Katsoupis will take place at the Mykolaichuk OPEN International Film Festival, which will be held in Chernivtsi from June 15 to 20. Willem Dafoe played the title role. Here’s a look at the film and the out-of-competition program.
The events of the film unfold around an art thief named Nemo, who is after the paintings of the Austrian painter and graphic artist Egon Schiele. In order to find his self-portrait, he breaks into the Manhattan penthouse, but the security system kicks in and the main character is trapped in the apartment for several months.
«Inside» premiered in the main competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2023, and at Mykolaichuk OPEN the film was included in the out-of-competition program.
Also at the Ukrainian film festival Double Immelmann by Vira Yakovenko about a mother who goes to the occupied east of Ukraine during the ATO in search of her son, who is a military man. The film Slightly Open Doors directed by Khachatur Vasilian and Oleksandr Bykov, which tells about the conflict between a man and his relatives over his desire to go to the front, will be shown out of the competition.
The anthology Ukrainian War Stories and Valentyn Vasyanovych’s live-action film Reflection, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, will be presented at Mykolaichuk OPEN.
The events of Reflection are set in eastern Ukraine and tell the story of a military surgeon captured by pro-russian militants. The man is tortured in Izolyatsia prison, while he is trying to help the Ukrainian military. After his release, the man returns home, lives comfortably again, builds a relationship with his daughter, and looks for new goals in life.
Mykolaichuk OPEN is an international festival of crowd-pleasing cinema dedicated to the iconic Ukrainian actor, screenwriter and director Ivan Mykolaichuk. All the events of the festival will be held at the Ivan Mykolaichuk Cultural and Art Centre, the Ivan-Hub art space and the Ivan Mykolaichuk Museum.
The festival will open with a screening of Lucky Girl by Marysia Nikitiuk (When the Trees Fall) about a successful TV presenter struck down by cancer. The closing film is Sisu by Jalmari Helander, about a Finnish ex-soldier who discovers gold in the Lapland wilderness in 1944, but Nazi soldiers want to steal his treasure.
