Filmed in 2019, “The Oath of Pamfir” comes straight from the borders of Ukraine, on the Moldavian and Romanian border. Its young director, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk,tells the story of the struggle of a father dreaming of a better life for his son, and implicitly, the aspiration of a country to…
Filmed in 2019, “The Oath of Pamfir” comes straight from the borders of Ukraine, on the Moldavian and Romanian border. Its young director, Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, tells the story of the struggle of a father dreaming of a better life for his son, and implicitly, the aspiration of a country to live free and dignified. Pamfir (real name Leonid) is the kind of man who is fearless. He does not back down from any enemy or labor. Suffice to say that he knows how to use his hands, as skilled in fighting as in building, digging, or loving his wife, Olena. After months away where he went to work in Europe, he returns home.
His people welcome him with joy, no one wants him to leave. “Nazar needs a role model,” pleads the sweet Olena who believes in God and sings in the church choir. The kid would like his father to stay at least until the carnival Malanka (Ukrainian New Year), this great pagan festival where masks and straw clothes transform people into creatures from another world. Pamfir’s brother, Viktor, manufactures these disguises precisely, which does not prevent him from engaging in smuggling without remorse. “Have you come to terms with your conscience?” he asks Pamfir who used to traffic too.
One day, the church burns down, and as Nazar is implicated, Pamfir promises to repay. Here he is trapped in a system he condemns. He will have to reconnect with everything he gave up to lead a life of his own. He will have to start using his fists again.
life force
If the plot is held in a few sentences, the film unfolds in two sumptuous hours where the trivial and the spiritual mingle and where each character, down to the most secondary, has a real depth. This is the case with the parents of Pamfir, whose love, tender and harsh at the same time, is not without secret recesses. Or Uncle Viktor who takes religion for a lie – “It’s at the church that they lie to you, Nazar, he says to his nephew, they program you for guilt”. Or Pamfir’s childhood friend, who works for Orestes, the monstrous local godfather, an all-powerful ogre with a mythological name.
Haunted by tragedy but constantly shaken by its vital force, “The Oath of Pamfir” has the scope of a biblical story that would metamorphose into a thriller. Chaos is never far away and the cursed trajectory, which the magnificent Pamfir tries to get rid of at all costs, is implacable. “God help me turn my pain into fuel,” he whispers, repeating what his wife has told him, as a last resort.
The film was presented at the Directors’ Fortnight at the last Cannes Film Festival. Since then, the director has gone into the field to film Ukrainian volunteers determined to fight.