Liturgy of Anti-Tank Obstacles

    • Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
    • Ukraine, United States
    • 2022
    • 13 min
    • Dutch Premiere
    • Best of Fests

    What are artists to do in wartime? To simply carry on doing what you’ve always done is impossible, the Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk remarked in an interview a few months after the Russian invasion. “Before the war, I was a filmmaker, but now everybody is a volunteer.” Ever since, he’s been making documentaries to show how the war has changed his country.

    The words of Ukrainian writer Oleksandr Mykhed at the beginning of Liturgy of Anti-tank Obstacles illustrate the extent to which the war has bonded the population: “The language of war is now spoken by everybody. And every bayonet, no matter what it is, counts.” This otherwise wordless film shows sculptors making anti-tank obstacles instead of religious statues. The soundtrack accompanies these scenes with liturgical song from a church choir and, later, an air raid alarm.

    Credits

    • 13 min
    • color
    • DCP
    • Spoken languages: Ukranian
    • Subtitles in: English
    Director
    Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
    Production
    Daniel Lombroso for The New Yorker
    Cinematography
    Kostiantyn Kliatskin, Andrii Lysetskyi, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, Denys Tokarev, Denys Vorontsov
    Editing
    Serhii Klepach
    Screening copy
    CUC (Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema)

    IDFA history

    2022
    Dutch Premiere
    Best of Fests

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    IDFA history

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