Stepne

Original title: Stepne

Directed by: Maryna Vroda

Country: Ukraine

Length: 117 min.

Year: 2023

Premiere: Locarno Film Festival 2023

Availability: /

Synopsis: Anatoliy returns to her dying mother in rural Ukraine.

RATING: 4/5 

REVIEW

A return and a burial. A premise of many contemporary ukrainan films, such as This Rain Will Never Stop or Homeward, a documentary and a work of fiction. Curiously, Stepne is also somewhere in between the two genres, and has the same premise. While the other two films chronicle a journey to the East, outside the country, 'Stepne' is set in the Lebedyn region, quite close to the Kharkiv region. Yet not one explosion is heard, and war and the present seems somehow distant from the isolated homes that lay around the countryland.

The narrative is almost static, to the point that it is borderline documenting what is seen rather than narrating it, with much room to improvisation or to real-life confessions. A dinner scene, for example, features the personal accounts of several elderly that remember anecdotes from their lives. It is no coincidence that Peter Kerekes has been involved in the production of the film, as the technique closely reminds of his own feature film 107 Mothers, which also incorporated non-actors and their own life stories in the film.
Stepne however further limits the presence of a plot in itself, making the blend between documentary and fiction even more seemless.

Almost frozen in time, Stepne depicts the lives of elderly people that live in semi-poverty. The landscape is covered with wild, barren bushes. The mostly handheld camera predominantly lingers on the dusty interiors of decrepit houses filled with rusty decades old memorabilia, a visual echo to the age and condition of the inhabitants of this rural region.
The desolate beauty of the barren autumnal landscape make for a visually striking feature debut.

Originally posted on the instagram page on August 23, 2023.