One of the most highly anticipated European titles playing in the main competition of this year’s Torino Film Festival (22-30 November) is Stanislaw Gurenko and Andriy Alferov’s Dissident [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]. The picture will celebrate its world premiere in the Piedmont capital.

Alferov is a producer, director, script doctor, curator and film critic. Before embarking on the making of Dissident, he penned and helmed the Kyiv-set segment of Five Cities Four Women, billed as “a mesmerising anthology of stories set during the COVID-19 lockdown”. Gurenko, who has also helmed commercials and music videos, previously directed a documentary feature titled Dustards.

The premise of Dissident is built around the interweaving of the fates of three main characters in the autumn of 1968 in Kyiv, the capital of socialist Ukraine: Oleg, a former fighter in the Ukrainian rebel army, who has served time in prison; His wife, Vilena; and writer Taras, who dreams of winning a Nobel Prize. 

Oleg clings to his Soviet past and dreams of dying for his ideals, while Vilena longs for a peaceful life and tries to keep him out of trouble. Their world shifts when Taras, a KGB-backed writer, hires Oleg as a consultant on a novel about the Ukrainian rebel army. The tension between Oleg’s underground activism and Taras’s double-dealing grows, with Vilena entangled romantically with Taras.

“Our film is not an attempt at chronology, but rather a tangle of almost randomly picked-out events that have risen like a lump in the throat of history. The map of our country's history is full of blank spots; we didn't set out to fill them in, as it's impossible. Sometimes, the roving gaze of the reporting camera, with its defocusing and convulsive zooming in its desperate attempt to assimilate what happened, is more effective than a careful academic approach,” the duo said.

Set in the pivotal year of 1968, the feature reflects the hopes, tragedies and disillusionment of an era, highlighting Ukraine’s struggle for independence long before its formal proclamation.

“We did not set our sights on reconstructing historical reality, but tried to convey the protagonist's inner world, with his traumas and despair,” they continued. “Ukraine today is experiencing military aggression, which began with decisions made in Moscow. The once-brotherly people are killing our compatriots, destroying our country and threatening Europe and the world today. The atrocities that the USSR then and Russia today continue to commit in a spiral that gets worse and worse every time must be stopped once and for all by joint forces. Our film, while not a political statement, is an opportunity to talk about and understand the methods and approaches of the Kremlin to create its Evil Empire.”

The script was penned by Oleksandr Kachan, Alferov himself and Wladyslav Mitsowsky. The cast is led by Oleksandr Prishchepa (as Oleg), Viktoria Romashko (Vilena), Dima Yaroshenko (Taras) and Vasyl Mazut (portraying a priest). The technical crew includes DoP Oleksandr Boiko and composer Evgueni Galperine.

Dissident was produced by Aleksandr Omelianov for Ukraine’s Joyfilms, and co-produced by Andriy Osipov for Odessa Film Studio and Alexander Rodnyansky for AR Content. Alferov himself and Yuri Kalinovsky served as the executive producers.