DEMONS

original fiction feature film / 110' / Ukraine, Poland

A stranger appears in a village in the Poltava region of Ukraine with a stack of low-quality literature. It is known about him that he is Slavik, that he is from Russia, and that he does not drink. In everything else, it has no special features, a gray moth. In the village, he meets a bright personality - the widow Ninka, the queen of a homemade booth. She is twenty years older than him, also has a past and shaky nerves, but her charisma and cheerfulness attract people to her like a magnet. Slavik is also attracted.

It is not easy for them to be together. Ninka is loving passionately, she is jealous. She wants Slavik to dig potatoes, not read his books and drink with her. He learned only the latter. He thought that he would spend the winter and leave, but whereas he is tied by invisible threads, Slavik returns and returns to Nina, and he cannot explain his attachment with anything other than mysticism.

The booth that Nina brews is not simple - it awakens demons and colors reality, and sometimes returns youth. During one of the orgies, Slavik's demon, awakened by Nina's moonshine, brutally beats her and destroys her beloved life. In another, Nina's demon kills Slavik's lover. It is customary to blame the neighbor witches for all troubles because it is easier than looking for the problem in oneself.

The neighbors, a family of witches, live as a large family - grandmother, mother, daughter, granddaughters and they do not stop multiplying, and nobody knows from what spirit. They are buying up the land of neighbors who died unexpectedly and have already occupied the entire corner. There remains a small separate island of Nina, which is not ""taken"" by any magic, and the yard of the neighbor Shpak, who is already terminally ill, and the only thing that does not allow him to die is the thought that his house will not go to witches. There is a ufologist professor in the village, to whom everyone goes for advice, even witches. He advises Shpak to leave his home as a legacy to the one he loved. And he loved Ninka.

Ninka and Slavik have a chance for a new life after Shpak's death - he leaves her his beautiful home, yard and goats. Everything can be started with a clean slate, Slavik and Nina plan to buy a TV and have a child. However, Slavik continues to drink and party, and Nina, out of desperation, sells their chance to the neighboring witches for pennies.

Slavik resolutely abandons Nina for betraying their dream and disappears for the whole summer, never to return. But the nights become cold, winter hints at difficult trials, and Slavik again returns to serve Nina."

Director: Natalia Vorozhbyt

Director, playwriter, and screenwriter. Winner of the Women In Arts Prize (2020) and the Shevchenko Prize (2022).

Natalia graduated in 2000 from Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow. Known for theatre plays like Bad Roads, Demons, and Granary, staged in Ukraine, Poland, the USA, and Great Britain. The TV series THE SCHOOL (2010), on which she worked as a screenwriter, gained cult status.

Together with the German director Georg Genoux, Natalia co-founded Theater of the Immigrant after the Maidan protests, highlighting Donbas immigrants' stories. A curator of festivals Doncult and Gogolfest, and a founder of Week of Modern Play.

Scriptwriter for CYBORGS (2017) and WILD FIELDS (2018), both acclaimed in Ukrainian cinema. CATCH KAIDASH (2021) earned the Golden Dzyga Award for Best TV Series.

Her debut feature film BAD ROADS (2020) won Film Club Award at Venice IFF and was Ukraine's entry for the American Academy Awards (2022).

Selected filmography:

• DEMONS, fiction, mystery drama, 105’, post-production

• 2022 – ARE YOU OK, fiction, drama, 5’, released

• 2020 – BAD ROADS, fiction, drama, 124’, released

• 2018 – THE WILD FIELDS, fiction, eastern, 110’, released, director Yaroslav Lodygin

• 2017 – CYBORGS, fiction, action/war drama, 113’, released, director Akhtem Seitablayev

  
  

Creative team:

• Producers: Yurii Minzianov, Dmytro Minzianov

• DOP: Volodymyr Ivanov

• Production Designer: Diana Todoratieva

• Casting Director: Olga Kimenko