IN THE NOISE OF THE DOWNPOUR / В ШУМІ ЗЛИВИ by Oleksandr Stupak | Ukraine (2024)

IN THE NOISE OF THE DOWNPOUR / В ШУМІ ЗЛИВИ by Oleksandr Stupak | Ukraine (2024)

This film is a contemplation of life through the prism of war. It is a premonition of global world changes… and a hope for the prudence of humanity.

Human beings live in a world of memories, fears and passions, dreams and hopes. In our memories, we increasingly want to return to the world of childhood – summer, where joy and light reign, as opposed to cruel reality, loneliness and existentialism. But it is becoming more and more difficult to get into this world, to dissolve at least mentally in the sun’s glare.

This film is about man in nature and nature in man, about cyclicality, the beginning and the end – the path to eternity. Autumn is heading towards winter, and we are so eager for light.

Director Statement

To destroy a nation, you need to destroy its culture.

This film is about horrors and hopes, anxieties and expectations, delusions and dreams. The film features a poem about nature (about an autumn forest), which is particularly relevant to our current state of affairs. The author of the poem is Vasyl Stus, one of the most prominent Ukrainian poets of the 20th century. Vasyl Stus was imprisoned in the Kolyma camps for his views and his defence of Ukrainian art and freedom. He was and is the voice and conscience of the Ukrainian people.

In 1965, at the premiere of Serhiy Parajanov’s film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Stus was among those who protested against the arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals. He was expelled from his postgraduate studies and was unable to publish two collections of poetry (the second was self-published and published in London). In 1972, Stus was arrested and sentenced to five years in camps and three years in exile. From the Magadan region, he appealed to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to renounce his citizenship (“To be a Soviet citizen is to be a slave”). He was refused, which is not surprising, but, oddly enough, he was allowed to return to Kyiv, only to be arrested again a few months later as a member of the Helsinki Human Rights Group, i.e. a repeat offender.

In 1985, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and in the same year he was killed in his cell – the prize is not awarded to the dead.

We wanted to make a film with the hope that this war would end soon and that people would see the light, as if after a big rain. So that the voice of our people (the poet) could be heard again and others could hear it.

Bio

Oleksandr Stupak works in the field of monumental and easel painting, graphics and sculpture, and audiovisual art. Born on February 13, 1984 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Director, producer: Oleksandr Stupak
Cast: Solomiya Kyrylova
Music: Terry Riley. License: Wise Music Group
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