Poland’s Damian Kocur Follows ‘Bread and Salt’ With Ukraine-Centered ‘Under the Volcano,’ Debuts Trailer: ‘It Was Important to Mark My Solidarity’ (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comMarta Balaga Say hello to the Ukrainian family of four (Roman Lutskyi, Anastasiia Karpienko, Sofiia Berezovska, Fedir Pugachov), enjoying their Canary Islands holiday.
That is, until the invasion begins and they are stuck in their nice hotel, surrounded by others who are still in the party mode. “The starting point was a newspaper article, just like with my debut ‘Bread and Salt.’ It was about Ukrainians who were surprised by the war in Madagascar,” explained director Damian Kocur, who is premiering “Under the Volcano” at Toronto. “It was also about my own emotions and this sense of helplessness I felt in the first weeks of the war.
That’s when I wrote the script. I felt I had to react to it somehow, and it was the only way I knew how.” For Kocur’s characters, the world has changed overnight.
But not for other hotel guests, who just want to have fun and enjoy the all-you-can-eat buffet. “[Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising] Marek Edelman also wrote about life in the ghetto, where restaurants operated despite the fact that children were starving to death on the sidewalks.
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