Audiences on the Lido may be forgiven for thinking they’ve seen the Ukrainian entry in the competition, “Reflection,” before in Venice.
Director Valentyn Vasyanovych’s somber study of the toll in the war against Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine is shot in his trademark series of static, single-frame shots, like “Atlantis” – which won the Venice Horizons Award in 2019 – and his “Black Level” (2017).Two years ago, one critic counted 28 static shots in “Atlantis”; according to Variety‘s count, “Reflection” has 29.
And although both films draw from the same subject matter – the war in the east (“Atlantis” is set in 2025) – they present different messages in a format Vasyanovych maintains is closer to pure cinema.“I find I am very comfortable with these rather limited – in terms of instrumentation – scenes and frames,” he tells Variety.
“They give me the opportunity to create large-scale intra-frame mise-en-scène and show the nature of cinematography.”He
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