La Palisiada
La Palisiada is a 2023 Ukrainian crime drama neo-noir film[1] written, edited and directed by Philip Sotnychenko in his directorial debut.[2] It is the first Ukrainian film that raises the issue of the death penalty, which existed in our country for several years after gaining independence.The hero begins to doubt the correctness of the law enforcement system when he sees all the lawlessness of conducting judicial experiments on the suspect.After all, a classic detective story is a kind of plot puzzle where different parts, thanks to logic, are combined into a common big picture.[14] The viewer watches a very murky story of how two law enforcement officers try to sew a criminal case with white threads to find the culprit quickly and put him under the firing squad while it is still allowed.The state was just being established, but all around, "cases were being coughed up," public property was being privatized, competitors were drowning in rivers, and journalists were being deported.[18] The film's authors successfully portrayed the investigator, played by Novruz Pashayev's, as a true specialist and, simultaneously, a caring father.With his charisma, ability to stand and walk in the frame, and a mustache combined with a fur hat - he created the image of a criminal investigation officer of the 1990s very realistically".Forensic psychiatrist Oleksandr is such a typical (post)Soviet intellectual who not only fell into the rift of the era but into some strange vagrant with the investigation, in addition to the fact that his family is collapsing.Although major Sabitov and psychiatrist Oleksandr have a lot in common - they are both men tired of life and circumstances that are equally in love with the widow of the murdered colonel, none of them will ever show their feelings.[27] The team worked with archival video and photo materials, including those of the Zaporizhzhia police, and consulted with the research staff of the M.I.A.[31] "La Palisiada" is a surprisingly emotional film that speaks about the 1990s through the prism of anti-nostalgia, perhaps the loudest in all Ukrainian cinema.[35] In between filming, after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Sashko's team won the Pulitzer Prize for the investigation of crimes in Bucha, together with The New York Times and many other international awards.[40] Kyrylo Troitskyi writes: "The film does not belong to the two trends (of course, conventional) of depicting the 90s - neither to the romanticization of "wild capitalism" and the gangster lifestyle nor to the incinerating realism of the devaluation of all previous ideas about good and evil.He showed, for example, how, during investigative experiments, law enforcement officers constantly ran out of tape in the video camera, and it had to be replaced.[43] "Filming on period video cameras, Sotnychenko and his cinematographer Volodymyr Usyk (along with set designer Margarita Kulyk) achieve striking authenticity in the details and atmosphere of the time."[45] The viewer can rest from this discomfort only in moments when the characters are silent because the voice intervenes even in the most sentimental scenes of the film.The direct target audience of the film is experienced moviegoers who are ready to watch something like "Atlantis" by Valentin Vasianovych".[48] Sotnychenko promotes anti-colonial narratives and emphasizes the need for various communities to contribute to rejecting imperial habits and entirely replacing them with conscious personal and national ones.(...) It is obvious that such an "uncomfortable" approach makes you angry, but if you managed to endure an hour and a half of thoughtful viewing, you would feel emotions close to admiration."[59] Screenwriter Iryna Tsylyk notes: "The authors position this film as an ironic detective story, and it really has a lot of subtle humor.