Ukrainian Sheriffs

Ukraine selects Roman Bondarchuk’s documentary UKRAINIAN SHERIFFS to represent the nation in this year’s Academy Award Foreign Language Category. The film premiered the at last year’s Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, where it won the jury special prize in the main competition.

Viktor and Volodya, two democratically chosen sheriffs, who try to keep the peace in their East-Ukrainian village near Crimea. Every day they do their utmost to settle neighborly disputes over lost ducks, stuck strollers, and other tragedies of daily life with compassion and a healthy sense of humor. On the eve of the country’s 70th anniversary of WWII’s victory, the village starts to feel the rumblings of the Russian invasion of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Men are being drafted into the Ukrainian Army to defend their country. Viktor and Volodya find themselves dealing with the rising tension of the impending invasion.

Roman Bondarchuk is the artistic director of the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Docudays UA. As a documentary filmmaker, he has collaborated with MDR, ZDF, Arte and other European TV channels. Some of his well-known award-winning films include THE TAXI-DRIVER, RADUNYTSIA, and EUROMAIDAN. ROUGH CUT. and CAFE VOYAGE. UKRAINIAN SHERIFFS marks his first feature-length documentary.

Director Roman Bondarchuk’s kind-hearted semi-comic documentary soon becomes entangled in political events as the Ukrainian Sheriffs move from tackling neighbourhood nuisances to tracking down draft-dodgers.
– Fionnuala Halligan, Screen International

Ukrainian Sheriffs emerges as an episodic, wryly amusing affair, displaying considerable interest in and sympathy with human foibles. The result is a life’s-rich-pageant tapestry whose apparent modesty belies a rich and sturdy complexity, and whose climactic coup de cinema crescendo involving the terrifying roar of an overhead jet resounds long after the credits have rolled.
– Neil Young, The Hollywood Reporter