Fans of domestic cinema have a unique opportunity to enjoy a new thriller that captivates from the first minutes and keeps you in suspense until the very end. "Stay Online" is a Ukrainian military film that was released on the screens of the country, and what makes it special is the format in which it was filmed - Screenlife.
This is the first Ukrainian thriller about the war, created after the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine. The script was written in the spring of 2022, and shooting began in the summer. The tape was made in the currently fashionable screenlife format - the events of the picture unfold on the laptop screen. Of course, for such a format to work, a strong script is needed - and the film has it, the picture keeps you in suspense from beginning to end. Focus shares impressions from the premiere.
As the author of the idea, producer and co-author of the script Anton Skrypets said at the pre-premiere screening, he and the director and co-author of the script Eva Strelnikova (“Return to Yourself”) wrote this story in the capital, in March-April 2022, when above their heads ( co-authors — brother and sister) constantly flew Russian rockets. As Anton remarked to Focus : "One of the goals of the film's release on the wide screen is to close the sky for us. You remember, at that time there was a constant call to the international community: "Close the sky of Ukraine."
The authors created on this impulse. Then they found private investment to launch the tape into production. Filmed in Kyiv, Lviv, Bucha and Sweden - the famous actress Kateryna Kisten, who played the mother of the Russian occupier, was in this Scandinavian country as a refugee.
But all this was only half the work - a huge amount of time was taken up by the production of visual effects - because, in fact, we perceive all the events through the monitor of the main character's laptop. The film team also coped with the technical side of the task. The victory of the Ukrainian film in the summer of 2023 in the competitive program of full-length debuts at the 27th international festival "Fantasia" in Canada, which specializes in independent cinema, can serve as an assessment of quality.
Man with laptop
The time of action is the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to the plot, the volunteer Katya (Yelizaveta Zaitseva) coordinates the actions of the ground defense of one of the Kyiv districts through the network. There she has a brother Vitya (Aleksandr Rudynskyi) and an uncle Tolik (Aleksandr Yarema). The mother (Olesya Zhurakivska) is not aware that her son and brother are in the TRO. In addition to her relatives, Katya, who knows English perfectly, is always in touch with a foreign volunteer, Ryan (Anton Skrypets), who delivers humanitarian aid to residents of the Kyiv region affected by the occupiers. Katya coordinates using a laptop that she got recently: the computer was donated to the needs of the front by one of the capital's companies.
Suddenly, the five-year-old boy Sava calls the girl on her laptop from a mobile phone, thinking that he is contacting his father - he was an employee of the company that donated the computer. Sava got lost during the evacuation from Buchi and is now looking for his parents. He was picked up near the road by random people in a car and he is now in Lviv. The girl could not refuse the child and begins to look for her relatives, along the way through social networks, finding out the nuances of the life of Sava's family, which was still quite happy and prosperous recently. She finds out that a Spider-Man costume has been ordered for the child and simultaneously tries to redeem this order to cheer up the kid with a superhero costume while the search continues. Soon the girl will have to face the harsh realities of the occupied territory - Russian troops were stationed in Buchi at that time. In parallel with the search, Katya's house is being bombarded with rockets and an air raid alert is regularly announced... What is characteristic is that the alert also sounded while watching the film - the audience was as close as possible to what was happening on the screen.
A star couple
Probably, this picture of our moviegoers was inspired by the American film in the screen-life format "The Search" (2018), where a father searches for his missing teenage daughter through a laptop and social networks. The picture caused a sensation, collecting $75 million at the box office against a budget of $1 million.
Our authors place their story in a real combat zone, which by definition creates a lot of dramatic situations.
Pros of the movie "Stay Online". A clear, well-composed script with well-defined characters. The main character has the main range of emotions, and Elizaveta Zaitseva perfectly copes with the difficult task of acting out the stream of contradictory events taking place on the laptop screen.
Katya's face is the main "tool" through which we perceive the collisions that occur with the characters. Even tiles and other designer screen elements work with such limited visual perception. It's hard to believe, but even through the slow motion of the cursor, the director Strelnikova managed to convey a lot of dramatic nuances - by the nature of his movement, we understand all the fluctuations and difficult decisions of the main character.
The high speed of changing situations does not allow viewers to get bored, they often respond to what is happening with laughter or tears. The film has quite decent action: gunfights, chases.
The dialogues are beautiful in their brevity and content. It is impossible not to mention the character of Oleksandr Rudynsky — he made the entire audience fall in love with him. Desperate, easy-going, direct Vytok is the heart of this film. His "tsomky-bomky" will definitely go down well with the people. In the picture, the pair of sister and brother works perfectly: she is strong-willed and rational, he is an impulsive brawler, but his character is firm.
Katya's tear-filled eyes seem to symbolize Ukraine, which is in trouble, and red-haired Vytyok, with his charming smile and courageous dimples on his cheeks, represents our Cossacks, who are pulling the Motherland out of this disaster.
Cons. The picture has few flaws.
The first is stamps that sometimes slip through. For example: the heroine's mother, who is always worried. Olesya Zhurakivska plays organically, but could her character do anything else besides worry? Just like the first mother of the Russian occupier - performed by Kateryna Degot - is also a fairly standard type of victim of Russian propaganda. However, she is balanced in contrast by another mother of the Russian occupier, soldier Gavrilov. Actress Iryna Tamim gave a simply incomparable scene here, and her lines caused a stormy reaction in the hall. The authors balanced these mothers beautifully.
The second drawback is the excessive number of victims among positive characters. Especially the death of one important, in my opinion, hero. Yes, the number one task in the film is to find the boy's parents. But there is one more thing - to drive the occupiers from the Ukrainian land. This character, having become a superhero, should not only perform the first task, but in a new capacity, give a thread of hope to the viewer that the fight against the enemy will be effectively continued. After all, this is what actually happened - the enemy was pushed back from these places. Especially since everyone already cried enough in the hall, one more death did not solve anything, but, on the contrary, took the military thriller into the range of melodrama. Why? Or later, if we take into account the initial goal of the authors, to force the West to "close the sky over Ukraine" as soon as possible.
However, regardless of the schedule, a very worthy picture came out, which keeps the audience's attention until the very end. Respect for the courage of the authors, who created a non-trivial cinematic expression in difficult conditions, is especially relevant today.
