Heavily pregnant Irka lives with her husband Tolik in a village in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine. It is July 2014 and fighting is taking place on the nearby Russian-Ukrainian border. A wall is missing in the living room of their house, having fallen victim to the hostilities. This exposes a view of the barren landscape which is becoming a theatre of war. Even so, Irka refuses to leave her home. While Tolik’s separatist friends expect him to join their fight, Irka’s brother accuses him of betraying Ukraine. When a Malaysian Airlines plane crashes nearby, Irka and Tolik initially think of it as another act of war. But the shooting down of passenger flight MH17 by a Russian defence missile is an accident.

Director Maryna Er Gorbach unfolds her sensitive family drama against the backdrop of a military conflict. Skilfully interweaving the personal and political story of the conflict in Ukraine and making good use of a carefully probing camera and excellent actors, she provides a powerful portrait of the banal horror of war.

Klondike’ Director Maryna Er Gorbach on Ukrainian Oscar Submission: “Like a Mirage of a Film”

Er Gorbach took a story ripped from international headlines for her drama, set amid the Russo-Ukrainian War and inspired by the shooting of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

By Nov. 18, when a Dutch court found three men, two of them Russian and one Ukrainian, guilty of murder in absentia for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the event had almost vanished from public memory. The court found that on July 17, 2014, a Russian-made missile supplied from Russia and fired by an armed group under Russian control in eastern Ukraine brought down the civilian flight, killing all 298 people on board, including 80 children.