Pamfir

An honest man in a corrupt border village fatefully agrees to one last job, leading to a showdown during the local pagan carnival.

Leonid, nicknamed “Pamfir” – ‘stone’ – is a family man trying to live an honourable life in the Carpathian forest borderland between Ukraine and Romania, where smuggling seems to be the only real living. From working in Poland, Pamfir returns to his home village during the Malanka festival to see his wife Olena and teenage son Nazar, who misses him so much that he commits an act of extreme vandalism to keep his dad around. Now Pamfir’s in debt to the mob – and as he embarks on a fateful ‘last’ job, things are about to get primal in this Wild West–like corner of Ukraine.

Coming to Melbourne from its stunning Directors’ Fortnight debut at Cannes, Pamfir announces a startling new talent in Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk. Combining sardonic humour with oppressive atmosphere, the film skilfully borrows from the western, neo-noir and action genres. But it’s the specifically local textures – the children’s folk choir, the straw costumes, the scary wooden masks – that make it so much more satisfying and cinematically magnificent than your average Euro-crime thriller, presenting an unvarnished view of the country we’ve not seen until now.

“Bold and brave, like its protagonist, Pamfir gorges on its imagery, with the final visual marker sending shivers down the spine.” – Screen Daily