LA PALISIADA

A nation between lethargy and new awakening. As a country still trapped too often in old patriarchal structures, Ukraine reserves the right, up to the summer of 1996, to sentence individuals to death and execute them. It is in this very period that Aisel and Kiril spend their childhoods. Their fathers, both police officers, are often away from home, wrapped up in an investigation into the murder of one of their superiors which extends to legally dubious methods. LA PALISIADE treats the effects these working practices have on the fathers, the families, the children and society in general at two particular moments in time – 1996 and 2021. The extraordinary camerawork often shifts unobtrusively, without cuts, between the documenting, zooming camcorder of the authorities, the view of the protagonists and the hidden observer of the scenery. The nesting-doll-like montage goes a step further – on one hand, we watch from a distance as the detectives view the video material, while on the other we jump right into this very material, becoming entangled ourselves with the investigation, public life and the darkest tendencies of humanity.