Klondike Movie

events 2 Minutes

Klondike was part of CIFF Summer Screenings, and Igor and I watched it today. It’s one of those movies when you can’t say, “It is a good movie.” It is shocking and disturbing, and you can’t take all the horrors in, but at the same time, you still can’t take your eyes off the screen. I can’t say “I recommend it.” If you feel that you have enough is you to sustain it, please watch it, but it’s not for everyone.

I am glad I went to that screening. It was a full house, and 95% of the audience were not Ukrainian. I guess it’s a good sign, but the panel discussion after the screening was horrible.

I don’t understand how the organizers could have no plan and no agenda for such an important discussion. I don’t understand the choice of panelists (citing the panel announcement Professor Petrovsky-Shtern from Northwestern University, and Migration Lawyer by profession and journalist by hobby – Svitlana Ugryn). To be entirely honest, Deputy Consul General of Ukraine in Chicago Yevgeniy Drobot, who was supposedly leading the discussion, wasn’t helpful either.

I am really upset about this panel, but it is difficult to me to pinpoint what exactly was so wrong. The panel was about nothing. Instead of sending a powerful message, the panelists were talking about the “authenticity” of making vegetable preserves, and the “Chekhov-style” acting when “people want to do something, but nothing happens.”

Two most disturbing episodes.

  1. One of the audience members asked the panel, whether “separatists stil exist.” The answer from the professor was: “there are some people [in these areas]who feel like they are Ukrainian, and the are some people who feel like they are Russian, and they want to be Russian, and there are some people, who are just common people, and they do not care, they want to have their house, and their cow, and have their babies… “
  2. Svitlana commented that “it is important that the soldiers at the end of the movie speak Chechen, because Chechnia was occupied by Russia, and now Russia sends Chechens to fight in this war, so if Russia will defeat Ukrain, it will move to invading other countries. That latter thing is true, but what is has to do with the soldiers speaking Chechen? If you ask me, that would be the only thing for which I might critisize the movie: you get an impression that all of the atrocities were done by Chechens, and Russians never committed any violence.

Maybe I will write more about it tomorrow if I will be able to arrange my thoughts.

Published by Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

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2 thoughts on “Klondike Movie”

  1. I am glad you have watched it. It’s a heavy movie but it is also one of the most talented and powerful creative statement about the war, in my opinion. The “discussion” is very disturbing indeed. On the other hand, I have not seen any thoughtful discussions/reflections about this movie in Ukraine either, so…

    Have you seen “Atlantis” (2019)? I think this is also a very good movie, and these two movies work like the right and left hand of a pair of gloves. “Klondike” is about the beginning of the events and gradual understanding of the irreversibility and hopelessness of all this, while “Atlantis” is showing us already devastated post-war society and, paradoxically, probably the birth of a new hope. It would be much more meaningful to watch and discuss them together, I suppose.

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    1. I did not watch Atlantis (I sort of feel I should have, but if I don’t remember, it means I didn’t watch it; I will find it). It would be difficult to discuss this movie, but having that they had a full house, and having that most of people who attended were not Ukrainians, it could be a great opportunity to send a powerful message. Especially since our government is not acting, to put it mildly. The last thing needed was a sentiment that “common people do not take sides”(?!)

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