Trailer for Natalka Vorozhbyt's 'Demons' Debuts Ahead of Locarno World Premiere
The Hollywood Reporter has exclusively premiered the trailer for Demons, the new feature from Ukrainian director Natalka Vorozhbyt, days before its world premiere at the 79th Locarno Film Festival on 13 August (The Hollywood Reporter).
The film screens in Locarno's Filmmakers of the Present competition section, a programme devoted to emerging and mid-career directors. Vorozhbyt previously directed Bad Roads, which was Ukraine's official submission for the Academy Awards (The Hollywood Reporter).
Set in the 1990s, Demons follows Slavik, a homeless Russian drifter who claims to be a writer and wanders into a remote village in central Ukraine. Nina, a strong and independent woman much older than Slavik, takes the stranger into her home. Their relationship turns from love into betrayal (The Hollywood Reporter).
Vorozhbyt has said the film unfolds on three interconnected levels: a man-woman relationship in a traditional society, a socio-political metaphor for the Russia-Ukraine relationship, and a mystical layer exploring the connection between the living, the dead and the otherworld (The Hollywood Reporter).
The cast includes Ruslana Pysanka, Aleksey Mitin, Tatiana Stepanova, Ruslan Garmash, Mykola Ponomarenko, Oleksandra Kovalenko, Tania Myronyshena, Markus Bright, Iryna Mak, Viktor Zhdanov, Maiia Sobolevska, Mariia Myronyshena and Oleksandr Rudynskyi (The Hollywood Reporter; IMDb; Don't Take Fake). The film features what is described as Ruslana Pysanka's final role; the beloved Ukrainian actress and television presenter died in 2022 (Mezha).
Behind the camera, Volodymyr Ivanov served as cinematographer, with editing by Milenia Fiedler and Andriy Gulyanych (The Hollywood Reporter). Iryn Kostyuk produces. The film runs 110 minutes, in Ukrainian and Russian, and is a co-production between Ukraine and Poland (Locarno Film Festival). Polish co-producers include Dariusz Jabłoński, Violetta Kamińska, Izabela Wójcik of Apple Film Production, and Magdalena Zimiecka of Orka (LB.ua).
International sales are handled by Celluloid Dreams, the Paris-based outfit founded by Hengameh Panahi that has long been a fixture of the festival market — the European Film Market in Berlin, Cannes's Marché du Film, and the American Film Market in Las Vegas, where sales agents and buyers decide what reaches screens (The Hollywood Reporter).
Locarno, held each August in the Swiss lakeside town, is one of the oldest film festivals in the world and a coveted launchpad for international art-house cinema. A competition slot there puts a film in front of the critics, programmers and distributors who shape what art-house audiences will see in the months ahead.
For Demons, that audience now includes anyone watching the trailer online — a first glimpse of a film that braids an intimate love story with a political allegory and something stranger still.
