HEAT SINGERS

Nadia Parfan’s documentary film portraying the trials and tribulations of the staff of a district heating plant in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk became a surprise hit at the Ukrainian box office. With great empathy and humour, the director follows the crew around on their everyday missions. We tag along with technicians to customers’ homes where the heating hasn’t worked for months. We wade through rotten basements, flooded knee-deep, and observe employees of the customer service hotline keeping their cool when confronted with the nastiest insults known to man. The fact that the district heating system still works at all here seems uniquely due to the improvisational genius of the perseverant crew. To keep morale up, the company organises a leisure programme that is embraced by the team with varying levels of enthusiasm: clad in their traditional embroidered shirts, the workers’ choir certainly generates a surplus of team spirit and solidarity. A congenial film about a band of working class heroes fighting to maintain a system in disrepair – featuring a very special soundtrack.