The 28th Revelation Perth International Film Festival began on Wednesday night and runs for 11 days showing a huge range of captivating, challenging and diverse films.
The opening night celebration including a screening of the debut feature from Ukrainian filmmaker Pavlo Ostrikov U Are The Universe.
It’s a post-apocalyptic sci-fi dramedy that also filled with beautiful moments of melancholy and romance. It perfectly sums up what this much loved festival is about, because where else have you seen a Ukrainian sci-fi movie about the last moments of the human race?
We meet Andriy Melnyk (Volodymyr Kravchuk), he’s a guy who likes his own space and solace. He’s not good at talking to other people, and keeps himself to himself.
He’s fallen into the perfect job for his personality. He transports nuclear waste from Earth to the distance planet Callisto. He’s the sole occupant of the dilapidated space freighter, except for a robot that’s programed to tell him jokes to keep him in good mental health.
Each trip to Callisto takes four years, two years to get there and dump Earth’s nuclear waste on planet, and two years to fly back home again. He’s been hauling waste for over a decade. But this time he doesn’t make it home, the earth explodes, shattering the planet across the solar system, and the astronaut is alone – the last man alive. With an annoyingly upbeat robot who like to tell jokes and play chess.
After some alone time, Andriy Melnyk receives a message, its from a woman, she too has survived. He’s the last man, she’s potentially the last woman. Their millions of miles apart, a message takes hours to go back and forth between them. They begin to talk, like pen pals sending letters, back and forth. Slowly getting to now each other.
Her name is Catherine, she’s French, and stuck on a distant space station.
For a film that only has three characters, and one of them is a robot, the other just a voice. This was a surprisingly captivating and gripping movie.
Pavlo Ostrikov asks some big questions about where we are going, what’s important in life, and how we connect with each other.
There’s one more screening of this excellent film. Catch it on Friday 4th July at Luna Leederville at 6:40pm. Take a look at the whole Revelation program.
