Maryna Er Gorbach started filming Klondike in 2020, before Russia invaded Ukraine, but it’s obvious where her loyalties lie. Set in the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2014, when local separatists aided Russian forces in taking over the area, the film focuses on Irka (Oksana Cherkashnya), a pregnant woman who runs a smalll farm with her husband, Tolik (Sergey Shadrin), who ostensibly is seen as an ally by the separatists but doesn’t really act like one, mainly because Irka is Ukrainian and hates them. A certain comic tone is struck in the first scene when the couple is awakened by an explosion: a stray mortar from the separatists has blown a hole in the side of their house. The next day an old friend of Tolik’s apologizes for the “mistake” and promises to fix the wall, but at the moment a war is brewing and they need Tolik’s car, not to mention his farm for quartering when the inevitable mercenaries show up. This absurdist setup is taken to its most tragic conclusion later that day when the separatists shoot down Malaysia Airlines flight 17 and a dead passenger still strapped to her seat lands next to Irka’s shed. 

Er Gorbach dedicates Klondike (no explanation of the title is ever provided) to women, and Irka plays the role of the angry antiwar female to the hilt, badgering her husband to rebuff his separatist friends and trying to maintain the semblance of a normal life among the chaos that’s churning in their village. Irka’s pro-Ukraine brother, Yaryk (Oleg Shcherbyna), arrives to persuade her to evacuate to Kyiv, where he now lives, and she refuses, because this is her family home; Yaryk’s, too, for that matter, and the tension between him and Tolik is not just political in nature. While their bickering adds a touch of the ridiculous to what is essentially a terrifying situation, it also epitomizes in miniature the conflict brewing at large, even if Tolik is no hardliner. When Yaryk discovers a Russian uniform that has been forced upon Tolik by his friends, Irka loses it, even though Tolik doesn’t have any intention of putting it on. Stuck between two immovable forces, he may come across as weak and vacillating, but he obviously loves Irka and knows what would happen to him if he refuses the separatists’ entreaties. 

As Irka’s pregnancy reaches term and the mercenaries arrive in full occupation mode, Klondike‘s absurdist component switches into overdrive, with horrifying results. Women, Er Gorbach tries to show, will always suffer more during war because their vulnerability is taken for granted. Even someone as firm and defiant as Irka can’t stem the tide of bellicosity that rules this divided borderland, but she’s determined to survive, and probably will.

In Ukrainian and Russian. Now playing in Tokyo at Theater Image Forum Aoyama (03-5766-0114). 

Klondike home page in Japanese