Ukrainian existential western. Having lost his family, the old Ivan is going mad, he colors his face with paints and puts on a Gothic head-wear made of feathers, he removes icon from the frame. Ivan builds himself a coffin with his own hands and prepares for meeting with the death. It seems nobody can bring his mind back. An unexpected meeting with a vagabond black dog changes his plans. Looking into the dog's eyes, Ivan comes round, he realizes that the death has arrived and meets it with dignity. The old man washes the paint off and takes away the head-wear, he returns icons to the frames and disassembling the coffin, builds a doghouse for the dog. Ivan dies with a smile on his face.
FALLING is a story about the post-revolutionary generation of young Ukrainian people looking for their place in a modern Ukraine. It follows two bewildered people who meet at a crucial moment of their existence and experience few days of happiness together.
An absurd story reflecting contemporary social problems in Ukraine, told in the century-old language of cinema, linking modernity and traditional Soviet socialist realism. Classical imagery imitates an old ideology contradicting the author’s worldview revealing the roots of reality’s distortion in this post-Soviet ambience showing that cultural, political and economic problems are knotted in military conflict.
The film is a psychological drama developing on the highlands of the Carpathian Mountains. Two helpless old men, brothers, desperately trying to keep up competition with each other in order to prolong their lives. Even though their bodies are decaying and both are sick the one still wants to outlive the other ... But one day a woman enters their remote dwelling...
