Underplayed Gems

Ukrainian Sheriffs (2015)

Ukrainian Sheriffs poster
Directed by
Roman Bondarchuk
Genre
documentary film
Country
Ukraine, Latvia, Germany
Runtime
1h 28m
Rated
14A
Rating
7.0 of 10 from 8 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
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How it feels

The film follows a small Ukrainian town's volunteer police force as they handle local disputes and petty crimes. When the war with Russia breaks out, the conflict reshapes their everyday lives and sense of security.

observationalintimateslow-pacedgroundedearthyunderstatedresilientmatter-of-fact

What happens

Ukrainian Sheriffs (Ukrainian: «Українські шерифи», romanized: Ukrainski sheryfy) is a 2015 Ukrainian documentary film directed by Roman Bondarchuk. The film begins as a portrait of a small town which tries to meet its own policing needs but shifts when the Russo-Ukrainian War begins, depicting the war's effects in microcosm. Bondarchuk's first feature-length film, it was workshopped and developed at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam IDFAcademy and the Dok.incubator program. The film won the IDFA Special Jury Award and the Docs Against Gravity Mayor of Gdynia Award, and was chosen by the Ukrainian Association of Cinematographers as the best domestic non-fiction film of 2016. It ranked 56th on the Ukraine film archives' list of the best films of Ukrainian cinema, and was Ukraine's official selection for foreign-language film at the US 89th Academy Awards. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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