PAMFIR It’s a miracle that Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s debut feature exists at all. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, the film was still in production and the sound designer had to brave shelling to transfer the footage abroad so the film could be completed.
But regardless of its production or context, is one of the great debuts of 2023, an eerie, brutal but compassionate tale of power, corruption and love. Oleskandr Yatsentyuk is magnificently hangdog (there’s something of Bernard Hill’s Yosser Hughes) as Leonid, known to everyone as Pamfir (the local word for rock), an ex-smuggler with a legendary shady past, who has made a
